LEVENTE L. DIOSADY
Professional Profile
Levente L. Diosady is an Honour Graduate (1966) in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto. He is a registered Professional Engineer, and a designated Consulting Engineer in the Province of Ontario. After graduation he returned to the University of Toronto, where he obtained his M.A.Sc. (68) and Ph.D. (71) degrees in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry.
In 1972 Dr. Diosady joined the Cambrian Engineering Group as a process engineer, and in 1974 he was appointed Director, Research and Development for the company. In this capacity he was responsible for establishing the company's research and contract analytical laboratories. He initiated an ambitious program of process development in the areas of edible oil processing and environmental control. Under his direction the laboratory group had grown to some 35 scientists and technicians by 1979, and performed some 10,000 contract analyses monthly for the food, feed and environmental control industries.
In October 1979 Dr. Diosady joined the University of Toronto, Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry as Associate Professor, where he joined Dr. L.J.Rubin in establishing the first Canadian engineering program in food process engineering. Together they developed four undergraduate and three graduate courses, and initiated a multi-faceted research and development program. Dr. Diosady was promoted to Professor in 1985. In 1990 he has been appointed Adjunct Professor in the University of Guelph, School of Engineering.
Professor Diosady's research interests include vegetable oil processing, edible-oil refining and hydrogenation, extrusion, supercritical fluid extraction, protein extraction by membrane processes, meat curing and food fortification. He was the author of over 100 publications in refereed journals, and presented the results of the group's research on some 100 international scientific meetings in Canada and abroad.
The research has resulted in 15 patents for a nitrite-free and low-nitrite meat curing systems, a novel approach to canola processing and canola protein production, chlorophyll removal from edible oils. The Innovations Foundation of the University of Toronto received a Canada Award for Business Excellence in the Invention category in 1987 for the rapeseed extraction process developed by Professors Diosady and Rubin. In 1990 their nitrite-free meat-curing system was selected by the Institute of Food Technologists as one of the ten best food products or processes for 1989. The recent development of techniques for double fortification of salt was successfully tested on a large scale in Ghana, and should lead to programs to reduce and eventiually alleviate iodine deficiencies and anaemia in developing countries.
In addition to his academic activities, Dr. Diosady continues to consult in the areas of food processing, trace organic analysis, laboratory planning and R & D management. He is the President of Food BioTek Corporation and he is a Director of Chemical Engineering Research Consultants Limited.
Dr. Diosady is a member of the Expert Committee on Food Engineering, Expert Committee on Refrigeration and Preservation Technologies and is a past member of the Canada Committee on Food and past-Chairman of the Expert Subcommittee on Energy all of Agriculture Canada, and a member of the Expert Committee on Food, and Expert Committee on Grains and Oilseeds Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.
He is an active member of several scientific societies, including the Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology, Institute of Food Technologists (U.S.A.), American Oil Chemists' Society, the Canadian Society of Chemical Engineering and a Fellow of the Chemical Institute of Canada. He is the past president of the Canadian Section of the American Oil Chemists' Society, and the Food Engineering
Section, Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology. He serves on the editorial board of two scientific journals in Canada and Hungary.
Dr. Diosady is active in the cultural activities of the Hungarian-Canadian community: he is a founding director and Secretary Treasurer of the Hungarian Research Institute of Canada, a research ancillary of the University of Toronto; a founding director and vice-president of the Rákóczi Foundation, and past president of the Hungarian-Canadian Engineers' Association.
November 1993
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