Judith Evans

I work on food refrigeration operations throughout the food cold chain from harvest/slaughter to the consumer. During my career, I have worked on a number of topics including frozen storage of meat, consumer handling of food and studies to improve the performance of domestic and commercial refrigerators, energy labelling, instrumentation performance, decontamination of food, cook-chill systems, novel refrigeration systems, optimising refrigeration systems and improving performance and temperature control in chilled and frozen storage rooms.

My current work revolves around reducing energy use and emissions from the food cold chain, energy storage and optimising food refrigeration processes.

I have 35 years experience of working in food refrigeration operations. During this period I have carried out work on frozen storage of meat, consumer handling of food and studies to improve the performance of domestic and commercial refrigerators, energy labelling, instrumentation performance, decontamination of food, cook-chill systems, novel refrigeration systems, optimising refrigeration systems and improving performance and temperature control in chilled and frozen storage rooms. My recent work has focused on energy storage and on reducing carbon emissions from the food chain.

I am actively involved in promoting engineering and refrigeration. I am a member of the EPSRC peer review college and involved in the work of the Institute of Refrigeration (IOR) and the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE). I am a member of the IOR technical committee and is regularly involved in their activities such as chairing committees, involvement in organisation of conferences, speaking at events and judging prizes. I am also the UK representative to the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR) and so provides a conduit between the UK and international IIR activities. I am a member of the IIR management, Science and Technology (STC), C2 (food science and engineering) committees, President of IIR ‘C’ commission (Biology and food technology) and a vice president of the IIR Careers in Refrigeration (CaRe) sub commission, the IIR cold chain in warmer countries sub commission and the Women in Refrigeration initiative.

I have been an editor of the Journal of Food Engineering since 2005. This is one of the foremost food engineering journals with an impact factor of 5.354.