Valérie Orsat is Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of Bioresource Engineering on the Macdonald Campus of McGill University. She obtained her PhD from McGill University in 1999. From 1999 to 2007, she coordinated the training activities of international developmental projects in postharvest engineering, first in China with the project “Microwave processing in China”, and then in India with the project "Consolidation of Food Security in South India". Since 2007, Valérie Orsat is back at McGill as an academic member contributing to the food engineering sector, recognized in 2015 by the John Clark Award from the Canadian Society of Bioengineering in recognition of her outstanding contributions in this field. In 2016, she was recipient of the McGill University Carrie M. Derick Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Supervision. This award acknowledges outstanding contributions to promoting graduate student excellence through teaching and supervision by a faculty member who has been supervising for 10 years or less.

Dr. Orsat’s research program addresses the broad spectrum of quality changes that occur during various stages of postharvest handling and food and bio-processing. Beneficial compounds and secondary metabolites are identified and approaches to enhancing their content and bioavailability in commercial foods are considered. The fate of health and techno- functional compounds during processing, extraction and purification are studied.