Dr Heather Shewan

Senior Research Fellow

School of Chemical Engineering
Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology

Senior Research Fellow

School of Chemical Engineering
Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
h.shewan@uq.edu.au
+61 7 336 54920

Overview

Heather attained her Bachelor of Technology degree in food engineering from Massey University. She then spent 10 years in gelatine manufacture in various roles including quality assurance, production management and process improvement engineering. In 2015 she completed her PhD study into the rheology of biopolymer soft particle suspensions, supervised by Professor Jason Stokes at the University of Queensland. She has since continued at UQ in postdoctoral roles investigating the relationship between rheological properties, food structure and sensory perception of real food products and model soft particle suspensions with a focus on dairy protein systems. The key outcomes from the project have allowed our industry partner to move towards the rational design of food products.

Research Impacts

Over the past 10 years, Heather has developed knowledge of the relationship between food and ingredient structure and physical properties focused on dairy and other protein systems. This structure-property relationship has been evaluated for protein-based systems at surfaces, during confinement and in bulk systems. She has been part of a team developing a new rheological method to measure and interpret rheological behaviour of suspensions where the gap between rubbing surfaces is of the same order of magnitude as the particle diameter. Under these conditions, suspension rheology is a function of particle micromechanics. She has used model systems of polysaccharide particles to develop the relationship between particle and suspension microstructure, narrow gap rheology, tribology and sensory for non-interacting particles. The key outcomes from the project have allowed our long-term industry partner to move towards rational design of food products. Heather is now a senior research Fellow under Australia's Food and Beverage Accelerator and will continue to work on structure-property relationships for a range of protein-based foods including gelatine, dairy and plant protein based foods.

Qualifications

  • Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Queensland

Publications

  • Fan, Nengneng, Shewan, Heather M., Yakubov, Gleb E. and Stokes, Jason R. (2024). Structure Response of Preadsorbed Saliva Pellicle to the Interaction between Dairy and Saliva Protein. Langmuir, 40 (22), 11516-11525. doi: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.4c00626

  • Tao, Shiwei, Ramirez, Julio, Shewan, Heather M., Lyu, Miaoqiang, Gentle, Ian, Wang, Lianzhou and Knibbe, Ruth (2024). Ink to power: an organic-based polymer electrolyte for ambient printing of flexible zinc batteries. Advanced Functional Materials. doi: 10.1002/adfm.202402050

  • Barrat, Jean-Louis, Del Gado, Emanuela, Egelhaaf, Stefan U., Mao, Xiaoming, Dijkstra, Marjolein, Pine, David J, Kumar, Sanat K, Bishop, Kyle, Gang, Oleg, Obermeyer, Allie, Papadakis, Christine M., Tsitsilianis, Costantinos, Smalyukh, Ivan I., Hourlier-Fargette, Aurelie, Andrieux, Sebastien, Drenckhan, Wiebke, Wagner, Norman, Murphy, Ryan P., Weeks, Eric R., Cerbino, Roberto, Han, Yilong, Cipelletti, Luca, Ramos, Laurence, Poon, Wilson C. K., Richards, James A., Cohen, Itai, Furst, Eric M., Nelson, Alshakim, Craig, Stephen L. ... Kwon, Jiheon (2023). Soft matter roadmap. Journal of Physics: Materials, 7 (1) 012501, 1-104. doi: 10.1088/2515-7639/ad06cc

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Supervision

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Available Projects

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Publications

Book Chapter

  • Shewan, H. M. and Stokes, J. R. (2020). Food structure development for rheological/tribological performance. Handbook of food structure development. (pp. 175-198) edited by Fotis Spyropoulos, Aris Lazidis and Ian Norton. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Royal Society of Chemistry. doi: 10.1039/9781788016155-00173

Journal Article

Conference Publication

Other Outputs

  • Shewan, Heather (2015). Rheology of soft particle suspensions. PhD Thesis, School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Queensland. doi: 10.14264/uql.2015.533

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

  • Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

  • Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

Completed Supervision

Possible Research Projects

Note for students: The possible research projects listed on this page may not be comprehensive or up to date. Always feel free to contact the staff for more information, and also with your own research ideas.