Following participation in 3 successful runs of NUS Foodtech Challenge, Nestlé R&D Singapore is happy to be part of this year’s challenge to invite students around the region to propose innovative ideas and solutions in the development of a snack with health benefits relevant to lifestyles of Southeast Asian Gen Z-ers, leveraging the goodness of sustainably sourced and minimally processed / wholesome ingredients. The session shall provide an overview of Nestle and open innovation initiatives to support the next generation of innovators in shaping the future of food.

With a background spanning 18 years in both the global food and beverage industry and academia, Dr. Wong has extensive expertise in food and ingredients innovation projects and commercialisations of new products through stage gate development. As a business leader with a robust technical background, he set solutions innovation strategies and led multiple teams across different regions to drive technical success in commercialisation. His technical experiences primarily centres around discovering novel functionalities of food products and ingredients, with a specific emphasis on food formulation. He also has hands-on experience in evaluating the user experience, textural and sensory properties of consumer food products.

Allan Lim leads Open Innovation team at Nestlé R&D Center, which is responsible for white space exploration, external partnerships and contracts. Allan started his career in Nestlé as a chemist in 1995 after graduating with PhD from the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology. In 2008, Allan took on the responsibility on innovation partnership in Asia. One of his biggest achievements is the establishment of strategic partnership between Nestlé and A*STAR in 2014.

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Today, Allan spearheads external R&D innovation in Southeast Asia through different collaboration models with public research institutes, academia, enterprises and startups. A case in point is the Circular Materials Laboratory, a precompetitive R&D consortium of more than 20 companies, universities, government agencies and public research institutes, which was set up in 2018 to accelerate research in material and environmental science for single serve packaging.