Speakers and Attendees

Keri Matwick is a scholar of food, language, and culture whose research explores how food communicates identity, values, and social meaning. She examines topics such as gastrodiplomacy, food media discourse, and emerging food technologies. Her current projects include research on plant-based and novel foods, hawker centers, and the effects of AI on food and language. Since 2018, Keri has lived in Singapore, teaching interdisciplinary communication courses in the Language and Communication Centre at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). She loves to run and drinks long blacks all day long. 

Jennifer R. Cash is Lecturer in History and teaches “Science and Technology for Humanity” in the Interdisciplinary Collaborative Core at NTU. As a historically-oriented anthropologist, she has long-standing research interests in the postsocialist transformations of South-East Europe, and more recent interests in heritage entrepreneurship in the context of Singapore and South-East Asia. Several projects have focused on food and its values – through the economistic lenses of “self-sufficiency” in rural communities, rituals of hospitality, and the symbolic dimensions of household wine production and consumption. She is the contributor of the chapter on “Foodways” in the award-winning Oxford Handbook of Slavic and East European Folklore (2026 Association of American Publishers Prose Award).

Hart N. Feuer is Associate Professor in the Rural Sociology Laboratory, Division of Natural Resource Economics at Kyoto University's Graduate School of Agriculture, where his research bridges food systems, heritage studies, and development theory. Dr. Feuer's research interest in heritage food centers around the diffusion of the Geographical Indication system for designating regional and heritage foods, as well as the promotion of gastro nationalism, including celebrity chef culture and social media. His fieldwork in Cambodia has produced extensive documentation of culinary heritage and traditional preservation practices. More broadly, his scholarship engages with questions of how to democratize and decolonize food systems research through community-based and farmer-led approaches. His recent work focuses on wild foods promotion and food literacy in the Global South, with an emphasis on documentation through new media and technology.

Daniel Story is an assistant professor of philosophy at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and a fellow at the Ethics & Emerging Sciences Group. He specializes in shared agency, the philosophy of death, the ethics of artificial intelligence, and the ethics of representation. His most recent work concerns the ethics of AI-generated representations of people, such as deepfake pornography and chatbots of the dead. His publications appear in peer-reviewed journals such as Ergo, Philosophy & Technology, and Bioethics. Daniel also writes literary and public-facing pieces for venues such as Aeon, Reed Magazine, and Prindle Post.

Dr Aimee Pink completed her PhD in Psychology at Swansea University examining the personality traits and psychologically factors that influence emotional eating. She currently works as a Senior Research Fellow at the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein, National University of Singapore.

Today, Aimee’s research still focuses on the psychosocial influences of food choice and eating behaviours, covering topics such as portion size and food insecurity in addition to emotional eating. Her most recent research aims to understand consumer perceptions of alternative proteins. She also has a keen interest in understanding the role technology can play in assisting individuals to adopt diets that can support human and planetary health. She is currently co-editing an Appetite special issue on the use of AI in eating behaviours.

Dr Sng Bee Bee is also currently an associate lecturer of Education and supervisor of student teachers. She supervises student teachers with the National Institute of Education, Singapore, on a part-time basis. She graduated with a Doctorate in Education specializing in Education Management from the Leicester University, UK.; a Masters of Arts specializing in English Studies from National University of Singapore and a Bachelor of Arts from University of Queensland in Australia. Her research interests are: Sustainability, Educational Change, English Language Teaching and Religion and Social Media. Her publications include a paper on food wastes entitled “Battling food wastes: the role of NGOs and hospitality industry”, 2019, International Hospitality Review, Environmental Sustainabiity. She also conducts Nutrition workshops for seniors in Touch Community Services Active Ageing Wellington Centre where she is currently volunteering.

Dr. Edson Kieu is a lecturer in the Division of Strategy, International Business and Entrepreneurship at the Nanyang Business School. He received his Ph.D. in Business (Strategic Management and Organisation) from Singapore Management University. As an interdisciplinary researcher, his work spans across two fields: Strategic Management and International Political Economy. In the field of Strategic Management, he focuses on corporate strategy and interorganisational networks by examining organsational-level alliances and conflict as antecedents to brokerage. In the latter field, his research interests revolve around topics of sustainability, development and climate change. Dr. Kieu's research has been published in the journals Sustainability and Climate. He is also an author of the book on titled "Climate Change and Food Security in Asia Pacific: Response and Resilience" as part of Palgrave Macmillan International Political Economy series. 

Erik Cambria is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence at NTU CCDS, where he also holds the appointment of Provost Chair in Computer Science and Engineering, and a Visiting Professor at MIT Media Lab. He has founded several AI companies, such as SenticNet, offering B2B sentiment analysis services, and finaXai, providing explainable financial insights, and has worked at HP Labs and Microsoft Research prior to joining academia. Today, his research focuses on neurosymbolic AI for interpretable and explainable affective computing in domains like mental health, climate resilience, and socially responsible investing. Prof Cambria is ranked in Clarivate's List of World's Top 1% Scientists since 2022, is recipient of many awards, e.g., AI's 10 to Watch, and was featured in Forbes as one of the 5 People Building Our AI Future. He is an IEEE Fellow, Associate Editor of various top journals, e.g., IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, and is involved in several AI conferences, e.g., AAAI. 

Jerrold Quek is a Lecturer at the Language and Communication Centre, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His teaching focuses on academic writing and thinking for both discipline-specific and interdisciplinary contexts. In research, his main interests are Applied Linguistics, (Interdisciplinary) Academic Writing & Communication, and Curriculum Implementation. Jerrold also observes Sociolinguistic issues, with a focus on Singapore English and Singlish. He is interested in how language constructs, maintains and reflects social relationships, including that within the contexts of food and culture. Jerrold’s research interests in education also led him to a collaboration that examined bodily responses and AI in the classroom.

Dr. Kelsi Matwick is an Assistant Professor of Core Writing at Samford University and a Fulbright scholar of American food studies. Her research explores the intersections of food, language, culture, and communication, with a particular focus on culinary diplomacy, food media, and identity. Drawing on discourse and multimodal analysis, she examines how food communicates values in contexts ranging from cooking shows and social media to national branding initiatives. Her current projects investigate omiyage and culinary nationalism, as well as the role of food discourse in shaping regional and global identities. In both her research and teaching, she is especially interested in how emerging technologies—including AI—mediate food narratives and cultural meaning. 

Luke leads Cornucopia, a SG-based global foresight and strategy practice advancing future-ready geoeconomic and climate resilience, innovation, and sustainable development across the public, private, and people sectors. Food-energy-water and metals/minerals security, smart cities/regions, and connectivity and supply chains are key focus areas.

Luke is a thought leader on scenarios and emerging issues, leading with foresight, polycrisis success strategies, and food and urban systems transformation. He is a board member of the Association of Professional Futurists, and a member of the Smart Cities Network and the Economic Development Board Society.

Before founding Cornucopia, Luke worked for two decades in leadership and general management roles in the agrifood and transport spheres of the Singapore public service.

A historian and political scientist, Luke graduated summa cum laude (BA, MA) from the University of Pennsylvania.

Raymond Tham is founder of Mycrocell, a Singapore company specialising in functional materials from mushroom mycelium biomass fermentation ("growing mushrooms in liquid"). He has 20 years of experience in cellular R&D at Flinders University, Australia, having co-founded the Centre for Marine Bioproducts and led more than $300m of industry R&D, and a previous biotech venture that scaled at 20 tonnes GMP plant cell culture. Raymond is actively involved in Standards Singapore in ISO/TC34/WG30 "Tissue cultured and cellular food technology products“; and is the ISO Joint Cooperation Representative between ISO/TC34 WG29 “Vegetable and algae proteins used for food products” and WG26 "Plant-based foods“. Mycrocell is an industry co-locator at Singapore Poly’s Future Food Lab with student projects in sustainable foods and processes to modify taste and texture. Mycrocell was recently awarded a Singapore Food Story 2.0 grant “Nutriboost” led by SIT, working with ASTAR BTI on mycoproteins.

Dr. Rui Mao is a Research Scientist at Nanyang Technological University. His research interests include cognitive computing and natural language processing. He has developed the first end-to-end system, MetaPro, for metaphor processing and concept mapping generation. Relevant algorithms have been published at top-tier AI conferences, e.g., ACL and AAAI. MetaPro has been widely used for cognitive analysis in diverse domains, including culture, finance, social science, behavioural science, healthcare, and communication. Relevant research has been published at cognitive science and data mining conferences, e.g., CogSci, LREC, and ICDM. His research in AI bias, cognitive analysis for politician, and diabetic patients has received the best paper awards from IEEE Transections on Affective Computing, IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (IEEE SSCI), and International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine Workshop (IEEE BIBM), respectively.

Mr. Chan Wai Xin is a lecturer at Nanyang Business School (NTU) teaching data management and interdisciplinary classes on technology’s societal impact. Bridging data engineering and gastronomy, he is the co-founder and system architect of Wine Safari Italia, utilizing an AI Wine Educator to advance specialised wine studies and communicate Italian wine heritage. He also serves as the instructor for the Italian Wine Scholar programme in Singapore. Concurrently, Wai Xin is a research collaborator with the RSIS Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, holding an MSc in International Relations from RSIS. His policy research spans the biosecurity landscape and is expanding into cognitive warfare, analysing how human reliance on AI-generated outputs influences societal decision-making and international relations