Professor Da-Wen Sun Elected Academician of International Academy of Refrigeration

Professor Da-Wen Sun, UCD School of Biosystems and Food Engineering, has been elected Full Member - Academician of International Academy of Refrigeration at its recent General Assembly held on 26 April 2018 in St. Petersburg, Russia. This is the sixth academician title that Professor Sun has been awarded since his first election to Royal Irish Academy in 2010, and subsequently to Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe), Polish Academy of Sciences, International Academy of Food Science and Technology, and International Academy of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering.

International Academy of Refrigeration (IAR, www.maxiar.spb.ru) is a non-governmental and non-profit organization, which comprises leading scientists, academics, professionals, engineers and businessmen. Its activities focus on solving complex fundamental and applied problems in refrigeration and cryogenic engineering, low-temperature energy, air conditioning, food processing and storage, ecology, economics, cryobiology, cryomedicine, еtc. IAR was registered by the Russian Federation Ministry of Justice (Certificate No. 2725) on 22 May 1995 and it is the successor of Academy of Refrigeration established in Russia in June 1993. Famous academicians of IAR include Nobel laureates and deputies of the State Duma of Russia, e.g., Zhores Ivanovich Alferov, the winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics. Full membership (academician) of IAR represents the highest honour in the concerned field.

Professor Sun has made exceptional contributions to the promotion and progression of global food refrigeration engineering. He began to work on novel refrigeration processes and systems as early as in 1994, and since joining UCD, Professor Sun has focused one of his research activities on food chilling and freezing technologies, contributing many cutting-edge achievements. Professor Sun has published over 100 journal papers on food chilling and freezing technologies, and in July 2013, he was presented with “The Frozen Food Foundation Freezing Research Award” by International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) for his significant contributions to enhancing the field of food freezing technologies. This is the first time that this prestigious award was presented to a scientist outside the USA.  

Professor Sun is a world authority in food engineering research and education. He has published more than 500 peer-reviewed journal papers (Web of Science h-index = 89, SCOPUS h-index = 94) with 50 papers being designated by ESI as Highly Cited / Hot Papers in Field. Many of his scholarly works have become standard reference materials for researchers in the areas of computer vision / hyperspectral imaging, computational fluid dynamics modelling, vacuum cooling, etc. Professor Sun has been honoured as one of the “Highly Cited Researchers” in the last 3 consecutive years (2015- 2017) by Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters).