Our expert contributors
Hannah Ackermann, RD, is a registered dietitian who uses her food and nutrition expertise to help Comet Bio educate consumers and tell its ingredient story. Prior to joining Comet Bio, she worked in nutrition communications at leading global market research and public relations firms. Ackerman holds bachelor's degrees in nutritional science and journalism from Indiana University, Bloomington, and an MBA in marketing from Dominican University, Chicago.
Jennifer Montgomery studied marketing at the University of North Carolina Kenan Flagler Business School. She began her marketing career at Procter & Gamble, where she led pharmaceuticals and personal healthcare brands. Accepting a brand manager position at Dow Chemical in 2010, she also held other positions at Dow within the Sports Marketing group, including Olympic Incentive Program Director. In 2018, she became the NAFTA Marketing Manager for Probiotics at DuPont Nutrition & Biosciences (now IFF Health).
Kevin Krail has extensive international experience developing new markets for nutraceuticals, dietary supplements and novel functional food ingredients. Educated in the United States, he has a bachelor’s in engineering and an MBA from the University of Colorado. Krail has a very successful track record in commercialising science-based nutritional products and introducing global brands into new international markets.
Michael Baumann, PhD, studied chemistry at the Clausthal University of Technology (Germany) and holds a doctorate from the Institute for Technical Chemistry. He started his career at the Dow Chemical Company as an R&D leader in 2001, exploring and advancing polymer development for various industrial and pharmaceutical applications. In 2015, Dr Baumann became Pharma Field Marketing Manager, EMEA, for Dow Pharma Solutions; following the 2018/2019 integration of Dow Pharma Solutions into DuPont Nutrition & Bioscience, he became Global Strategic Marketing Manager, Immediate Release Pharmaceutical Dosage Forms at DuPont. Following the recent merger of DuPont N&B with IFF, he now serves as the Global Strategic Marketing Manager for the Dietary Supplements within the Pharma Solutions division of IFF.
Mike Hughes is head of research and insight and has more than 14 years' experience analysing consumer trends across the food, drink and supplement industry. Hughes has a particular interest in challenging industry perceptions when it comes to assumptions around how consumers think and behave and identify new and evolving trends across markets.
Prof. Francesco Marotta, MD, PhD expertise lies within gastroenterology, oxidative stress, ageing and nutrigenomics. Prof. Marotta holds an impressive and extensive publication list. He has cooperated with Nobel laureate Prof. Montagnier and is Honours Research Professor at the department of Nutrition Food Sciences at Texas W. University (USA). He is also part of the Advisory Board Panel of the Center for Life Science at Nazarbayev University and Ministry of Science Astana, Kazakhstan. Prof. Marotta further serves as an external examiner for PhD candidates at McGill University (Canada) and is a non-faculty lecturer in Nutrigenomics & Aging at Harvard University (USA), as well as the Chair of Vitality & Longevity, Medicine Science Commission at the Femtec World Federation. Prof. Marotta is also the co-founder of ReGenera R&D International for Aging Intervention.
Radhika Bongoni, PhD, heads business development at BaseClear BV, a 28-year-old microbial genomics service provider in Leiden Bioscience park of Netherlands. Dr Bongoni received her doctorate in food technology – Phytochemistry (2014) from Wageningen University & Research (the Netherlands) and an MBA (2015) from Tias School for Business & Society (the Netherlands). With techno-commercial expertise, she is involved in business growth, market trends, application-driven microbial genomics products & services, and market expansion. Prior to BaseClear, Dr Bongoni worked briefly for DSM innovation centre and Bioriginal BV.
Sophie Medlin is a well-recognised consultant dietitian and is the chair for the British Dietetic Association for London. Medlin has expertise in gastrointestinal and colorectal health. She worked in acute hospitals specialising in gastrointestinal diseases before moving into academia, where she worked as a lecturer at King's College London. Medlin is a go-to spokesperson for media regarding evidence-based nutrition, regularly featuring in print, broadcast and social media. She is also the head of nutrition research for Heights, the Braincare company.