Maria McDonagh
Business Development Manager for Medicinal Nutrition
Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT), Galway
Academic / Work Experience:
Holding an Honors Bachelor of the Laws Degree and a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Studies from the National University of Ireland Galway, Maria McDonagh has over ten years’ professional experience across the academic, financial and legal service sectors in Ireland. Maria’s core areas of competence include business development, project management, communications and marketing.
Having worked as a consultant for over three years within the academic sector, Maria has been involved in the development and growth of a number of private training and start-up companies. She also holds specialist expertise in regulation and compliance and has comprehensive experience in designing bespoke quality assurance systems, conducting system audits and implementing and supporting revised systems. Maria has recently been appointed as the Business Development Manager for Medicinal Nutrition in GMIT’s MET Gateway where she acts as the main interface between GMIT and Industry, promoting and coordinating industry training and research projects. Maria also manages a number of GMIT’s international funded research projects aimed at boosting food innovation.
Maria is the Project Manager of Developing and Sustaining Female Food Entrepreneurs. With extensive experience within the discipline of excellence in project implementation and delivery, Maria will be responsible for the overall management of the project, ensuring strategic execution of the project’s aims and objectives. Her prime focus will be implementing the project schedule and coordinating activities detailed in the methodology. Maria will also provide significant due diligence and support throughout the duration of the project to ensure the core goals are achieved
Dr. Lisa Ryan
Head of the Department of Natural Sciences in the School of Science and Computing
Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT), Galway
Academic / Work Experience:
Dr Ryan has an extensive background in working with the food industry and providing training and
education in food. She has a first class honours degree in Nutritional Science and a PhD in
Nutritional Biochemistry from University College Cork (UCC), Ireland. Her first postdoctoral
experience was an Enterprise Ireland-funded project involving a collaboration between the
Chemistry department and the Nutrition department at UCC. She subsequently embarked on a
Science Foundation Ireland-funded postdoctoral research fellow.
Dr Ryan moved to the UK to a Senior Lectureship at Bournemouth University before moving on to another Senior Lectureship at Oxford Brookes University in 2008 where she joined the Functional
Food Centre (FFC) and established the Phytochemical Research Group. In 2010 she was asked to
take over the running of the FFC as Operations Director and turned the research centre into one
of the few profit-generating organisations within the University. Dr Ryan was invited to Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, to help establish the BASE (Be Active Sleep & Eat) Research Facility and lead the Functional Food research stream. Dr Ryan has attracted considerable
research income in the area of phytochemicals and functional foods.
To date she has worked with over 50 food industry partners including small discrete projects and larger clinical trials and has also attracted research funding from competitive funding agencies
such as the Medical Research Council (MRC, UK), The Nuffield Trust (UK) and The Wellcome Trust (UK). In 2015, Dr Ryan was awarded the prestigious Agrifood Fellowship in Australia to investigate the potential of marine polyphenols as anti-diabetic agents.
Emma Finnegan
Research Assistant & Project Coordinator
Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT), Galway
Academic / Work Experience:
Emma Finnegan holds an Honours Bachelor of the Sciences in Health Science and Nutrition. With over 3 years’ experience in the Health and Nutrition, Emma has provided nutrition consultancy across the academic, food and wellbeing sectors. Emma has extensive experience in working with start up companies and has worked alongside a number of successful entrepreneurs in the Irish health and fitness industry. Emma is skilled in business start up, marketing, branding and project coordination.
Project Role:
Emma is the Project Coordinator of the Developing and Sustaining Female Food Entrepreneurs
project. Experienced in project coordination and execution, Emma will work alongside the Project Manager and Consortium to manage and deliver the project activities and events. Emma also
manages the project marketing and dissemination plan and activities to ensure that the project and its outputs reach a wide audience and achieve the desired impact.
Georgeta Raţă
Researcher
Comunitatea Pentru Invatarea Permanenta (CPIP) Timisoara, Romania
Academic / Work Experience:
Georgeta Raţă holds a BA in French and English and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of
Bucharest, Romania.
She was Erasmus+ Coordinator at the Banat University of Agricultural Science and Veterinary Medicine “King Michael I of Romania” from Timisoara, Romania.
Her main areas of interest are communication, education, languages and social sciences, fields in which she has published over 150 scientific articles and papers. She has published, edited and co-edited extensively. In the field of social sciences, she has co-edited Social Sciences Today: Between Theory and Practice (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), Academic Days of Timisoara: Social Sciences Today (CSP, 2011), Applied Social Sciences: Administration and Management (CSP, 2013), Applied Social Sciences: Economics and Politics (CSP, 2013), Applied Social Sciences: Psychology, Physical Education and Social Medicine (CSP, 2013), Applied Social Sciences: Social Work (CSP, 2013), Applied Social Sciences: Sociology (CSP, 2013), Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Social Sciences (CSP, 2014), Social Economics & Entrepreneurship (CSP, 2014), Social Issues (CSP, 2014).
Project Role:
Georgeta is a CPIP researcher in the Project “Developing and Sustaining Female Food Entrepreneurs”. Her prime focus as a researcher of CPIP, she will be attending all MEs, attending
LTTA1 and LTTA2, collating feedback and produce results report from E1, contributing to the development of both project outputs, developing surveys and questionnaires associated with
project, disseminating the project and its intellectual outputs, implementing the Communication Plan, organising and hosting E1, organising and hosting TNM2, partaking in the Needs Analysis, providing female mentors to contribute to MEs, running Focus groups and analysing associated
data.
Rodica Pana
Part of the CPIP-Community for Lifelong Learning, an NGO developing projects for rural area.
Comunitatea Pentru Invatarea Permanenta (CPIP) Timisoara, Romania
Academic / Work Experience:
Rodica graduated from Colegiul Banatean High School and studied at West University in Timisoara Faculty of Economics and Business Administration. In 1992 she opened her accounting company and at the same time, together with other four friends built up on NGO working in social fields. Although, she is from an economist background, she has always been attracted by the NGO
sector, developing programs and projects, teaching and training.
In 2004 Rodica started her study in Dialogical training methods, under umbrella of University of
Leipzig. In 2005 she founded the Association Centre for Promoting Lifelong Learning and until
today, together with her team, are running around 85 European projects on different topics and
for different target groups. Rodica is a master trainer in Dialogical methods and has developed
training programmes and projects on this subject.
In 2010 she became part of CPIP-Community for Lifelong Learning, an NGO developing projects for rural area.
Greta Volodzkaite
Researcher
BALTIC EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE (BETI), Lithuania
Academic / Work Experience:
Greta has a bachelor’s degree in economics and finances (in English). Now she is studying a
master’s degree in big business data analytics. She has been working on various projects as a
researcher for two years already. Her focus fields are women career in ICT, entrepreneurship
opportunities for women from disadvantaged backgrounds and training for low skilled adults and
adults with fewer opportunities. She has experience in assessment tools, training programs
creation and evaluation of the results.
Project Role:
Greta is a BETI researcher in the Project “Developing and Sustaining Female Food Entrepreneurs”. Her prime focus as a researcher of BETI, she will be attending all MEs, attending LTTA2, collating feedback and produce results report from E1, contributing to the development of both project outputs, handling budget, collecting data, developing questionnaires associated with project, disseminating information of the project and its intellectual outputs, execute the Communication Plan, organising and hosting meetings, partaking in the needs analysis, searching and providing female mentors to contribute to MEs, running focus groups and analysing associated data.
Danguole Rutkauskiene
Project Manager
BALTIC EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE (BETI), Lithuania
Academic / Work Experience:
Danguole Rutkauskiene is an Associate Professor at the Department of Multimedia Engineering (Faculty of nformatics) at Kaunas University of Technology and expert of Education at Baltic Education Technology Institute (BETI). She was a founder member of the National Association of Distance Education in Lithuania and currently is its President. Danguole Rutkauskiene is a member of INFOBALT and National Digital Coalition Board.
Also, she is the initiator of the special interest group “Innovation, Science, Technologies: Women in STEM” (IST: W4STEM). She has been involved as a coordinator and partner in numerous national and international projects, participated and organized national seminars and conferences as well as international events. She is the author and co-author of 36 books and 197 articles on the theme of e-learning. She has a particular interest in e-learning methodology, management and the use of advanced learning technologies in universities and educational institutions.
Recently, she has a big interest in MOOCs and actively participates in the researches of MOOCs in national and international levels and participated in 116 projects national and international level. In addition, she has initiated and participated in the preparation and provision stages of three MOOCs.
Project Role:
Danguole is a BETI project manager in the Project “Developing and Sustaining Female Food Entrepreneurs”. Her prime focus as a project manager of BETI, she will be attending all MEs, attending LTTA1 and LTTA2. She will take care of the discipline of excellence in project
implementation and delivery, her prime focus will be coordinating researchers and setting up the
working schedule. And also Danguole will be the strength of the team, she will give them the
support they need to succeed.
Marco Failoni
Project Manager
Confederazione Italiana Agricoltori Toscana (CIA Toscana)
Academic / Work Experience:
Marco Failoni – graduate in Agriculture.
Mr Failoni is the Project Manager at CIA Toscana and has significant expertise in participating and delivering on European projects. Marco is also involved in the training and advisory services and is responsible for establishing Environment and Rural Development Policies in CIA Toscana.
Alessandra Alberti
CIA Toscana Advisor
Confederazione Italiana Agricoltori Toscana (CIA Toscana)
Academic / Work Experience:
Alessandra Alberti – graduate in Agriculture.
Alessandra is an expert in agriculture, environment and organic agriculture. She is highly experienced in delivering on European Research Projects and is responsible in CIA Toscana’s training services. CIA Toscana in the frame of his advisor service activity, collaborated in many local projects aimed to the social farming.
The Polish Farm Advisory and Training Centre not-for-profit Sp. z o.o.
The Polish Farm Advisory and Training Centre not-for-profit Sp. z o.o. is a private not-for-profit company dedicated to providing farm advisory services, enhancing the entrepreneurial spirit in rural areas and fostering the rural development in general. The organisation’s main goal is to improve the livelihoods of people living in rural areas by offering them the best and most professional and personalised advice, as well as a variety of training courses and educational materials. The company believes that rural development is one of the core drivers of economic growth in Poland, and therefore wants to contribute to the productivity and competitiveness of Polish rural areas. The company aims at providing tailored education and training services in rural areas as well as improving the vitality and quality of life in rural areas.
Natalia Truszkowska
The Polish Farm Advisory and Training Centre (PFA)
Academic / Work Experience:
Natalia Truszkowska is an active practitioner of the PRINCE 2 Project Management Qualification.
She has a BA Degree in Spanish and German and holds a Master‘s Degree in International Business Management with a specialisation in small and medium sized enterprises and female entrepreneurship. In addition to that, she has professional experience in the area of rural development and agriculture. Mrs. Truszkowska has managed and worked on many EU funded projects for ten years, gaining experience in project development, implementation, management, and coordination at Brussels level. These projects have spanned across a variety of issues and challenges in relation to vocational education and training, adult learning, and youth actions.
Tomasz Truszkowska
The Polish Farm Advisory and Training Centre (PFA)
Academic / Work Experience:
Tomasz Truszkowski is specialised in designing effective project dissemination and communication channels and optimizing these as well as working with graphic designers and producing impactful and effective communications such as websites and dissemination materials whether for projects or other activities.
Furthermore, he is extensively experienced in organising training courses, workshops, national conferences, end users testing sessions and other events with the active involvement of national institutions and experts. His main responsibilities include overall management and administration, organizing project meetings and events, dissemination activities to relevant stakeholders and target groups.