After completing my bachelor's degree in nutrition and food sciences with a focus on food technology at the University of Bonn, I moved to the Netherlands to pursue a master's degree in food technology at Wageningen University. During this time, I gained insights into various areas of research and development in the food industry through internships, including coloring foods and beverages. Afterwards I worked for three years as a product developer in the bakery sector at Schwarz Produktion before starting as a research assistant at KIT in September 2025 with focus on the extrusion of low moisture texturized vegetable proteins for meat analgues.

Currently, purified plant protein isolates or concentrates are primarily used in the production of meat substitutes. This costly process generates by-products that cannot always be processed further in the value chain, despite containing valuable nutritional ingredients such as dietary fibre.

My work aims to use protein-starch-fibre model systems to investigate the formation of structures in the production of dry extrudates, with the aim of deriving process-structure and structure-property functions. In particular, the influence of fibre on expansion behaviour will be examined. The transferability to less processed legume flours will then be evaluated.

Various raw material compositions are represented using model systems. First, these are characterised under extrusion-like conditions in a closed cavity rheometer. The process parameters for extrusion are then determined on a laboratory scale based on this characterisation. The extrudates are evaluated using expansion indices, mechanical analyses and other methods.