Tap into the Insights of IFT’s Beacon Lecturers
Want to spend a fast-paced 45 minutes expanding your horizons and gaining new insights? If so, you’ll definitely want to set aside time in your schedule for the Beacon Lectures, which take place from 4 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. on Tuesday, June 26, and Wednesday, June 27, in Room N101 of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Interestingly, both of this year’s speakers will bring a health and wellness perspective to their respective presentations. Both are medical doctors who have high level food industry experience.
Tuesday’s lecturer, Mehmood Khan, M.D., Chief Executive Officer, Global Nutrition Group, and Chief Scientific Officer of PepsiCo., will speak on the topic “PepsiCo: Leveraging a Legacy of Taste to Lead Global Food and Beverage Innovation.”
On Wednesday, José M. Saavedra, M.D., Head of Medical and Scientific Affairs, Nestlé Nutrition, and Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Gastroenterology, and Nutrition, at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will discuss “Diet and the Epidemics of Today: Opportunities for Change.”
Khan’s lecture will consider the resources and expertise that global food and beverage businesses can leverage in order to provide consumers with access to food that is safe, delicious, affordable, and nutritious. At PepsiCo, Khan has been tasked with an ambitious project: more than doubling sales of the company’s portfolio of nutritious foods and beverages, taking it from the current level of $14 billion to $30 billion by 2020. The Global Nutrition Group he leads works to accelerate product and process innovation for brands including Quaker Oats, Tropicana, Gatorade, Pepsi, and Lay’s. Khan was previously a faculty member at the Mayo Clinic, where he served as Director of the Diabetes, Endocrine, and Nutritional Trials Unit in the division of endocrinology.
Saavedra holds joint appointments to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In his role at Nestlé, he has worked on furthering the development of education and research into nutrition products for infants, children, and adults for broad clinical and medical applications. His current focus is on fostering collaborative efforts between industry, healthcare providers, and academic organizations to develop interventions for the prevention of childhood obesity. His career highlights include creating and developing the Johns Hopkins Children’s Nutrition Center, which he directed for a decade.
The backgrounds that both men bring to the speaker’s podium make them a perfect fit for the role of Beacon Lecturer. The lectures made their debut last year as a vehicle for adding new perspectives to the Annual Meeting with presentations by high-profile individuals capable of imparting cutting-edge, game-changing perspectives on food science and technology. The format for the lectures on both days is a 30-minute presentation followed by a 15-minute question-and-answer session.
