Dr. Luis A. Puente
Universidad de Chile, Chile
Luis Puente Diaz
Associate Professor Universidad de Chile, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences Faculty, Food Science and Chemical Technology Department.
Dr. Luis Puente is a Food Engineer from Universidad Tecnologica Metropolitana, he has diplomas in curriculum innovation, packaging and innovation management. He did his Ph.D in the Department of Food Technology at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Chile.
He has developed several activities in the field of teaching and university management at Universidad Tecnologica Metropolitana (1998-2010) and at Universidad de Chile (2010 to date) teaching courses in different undergraduate and graduate programs. He is currently a visiting professor at the University of Alberta-Canada (2023-2025).
In the field of research, his main line of research is based on the application of various technological alternatives for the development of innovative combined drying processes with a view to obtaining stable and high-quality food products and ingredients, preserving their technological and functional properties to the maximum. In this context, the integral use of different raw materials and their by-products for the development of functional ingredients is also considered. It also includes the modeling of the operation in terms of the transfer of matter and energy aspects to scale and transfer the developments obtained to the local industry.
The technologies included in the line are infrared-assisted hot air drying, refractory window drying and ultrasound-assisted osmotic drying. It also considers projecting towards other technological elements that allow accelerating and/or improving food dehydration processes.
In addition to the above he was a scholarship holder of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in the year 2006, carrying out the cooperation course Technical Support for SME I Biotechnology at the Municipal Research Institute of Technology of Osaka-Japan and a scholarship holder of the Ministry of Commerce of the Government of China in the course High Technology in Food Processing for Developing Countries taught by the Beijing Food Research Institute, finally he has been a scholarship holder of the Government of Egypt in the course "Project Analysis" taught by the Egyptian Intermational Centre for Agriculture in 2013.
He is a member of the Chilean Society of Food Technology SOCHITAL, and the Chilean Society of Nutrition (SOCHINUT). He is associate editor of the food area in the Chilean Journal of Nutrition.