World Coffee Research (WCR) has announced the appointment of Dr. Verônica Belchior to the position of Research Scientist for Coffee Quality Evaluation.
Dr. Belchior comes to WCR with 10 years of experience in coffee research and nearly 15 years of experience in the coffee industry. Most recently, she served as an educator and consultant, leading courses on Q-Grader Preparation, Roasting Chemistry, and Coffee Extraction Kinetics worldwide.
She holds a Ph.D. in Food Science from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), where she also served as a postdoctoral candidate and spearheaded a project to build roast profiles of coffee samples across different roasting equipment using evaluation by Fourier Transform Medium Infrared Spectroscopy and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.
Dr. Belchior has been a Q-grader since 2013 and has acted as a taster in coffee quality contests throughout Brazil. In 2014, she created her version of the Specialty Coffee Sensory Analysis course and taught it at the best specialty coffee shops and roasters across the country. Even further, she was a partner in the Coffee Sensorium Project.
In her new role, Dr. Belchior will provide scientific expertise and technical leadership for coffee quality evaluation within WCR’s varieties-focused research and development programs.
Dr. Belchior will provide oversight and act as a liaison between industry, external research collaborators and WCR’s plant breeders, agronomists, and program staff to ensure coffee quality is an integral component of the program design and variety evaluation processes. She will work toward the primary goal of addressing coffee quality at a global scale to support breeding programs in many of the world’s coffee origins.
