I am a professor and researcher at the School of Engineering and Sciences and a founder of the Research Center for Protein Development (CIDPRO), an initiative to extract and modify functional proteins for food applications.
I obtained a Bachelor's Degree in Food Engineering in 1999, a Master's Degree in Biotechnology, and an MBA, both in 2007. My professional experience includes a Technical Support position within the Quality Assurance team (Grupo Panificador Azteca) from 1999 to 2000 and a seven-year tenure as Instructor-Consultant for the food industry (IDEA S.A de C.V, 200-2007). In addition, I was an intern in the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO, Vienna, Austria, 2012) in the Energy and Climate Change Branch and a volunteer in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO, Mexico City, 2007-2008). In the latter, I developed information to assess food security (for Mexico and Latin America) when cereals are used to produce liquid fuels.
Since 2013, I have been a member of the National Researchers Council. In addition, I was awarded Romulo Garza Prize for Research and Sciences (third place, 2009) and "Premio Mujer Tec" in 2015 in the Mentorship category because of my work helping female students and engineers to pursue their goals in academia and industry. I have been a member of the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias (AMC) since 2021.
My research areas are:
----- Protein extraction processes for vegetable proteins with food applications
----- Methods for selective inactivation of anti-nutritional compounds from pulses
----- Changes in protein structure and their impact on the functional properties within a food matrix
Email: cristina.chuck@tec.mx
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristina-chuck-hernandez-1397b022/