Siew-Young Quek

Siew-Young Quek is a New Zealand academic and is a full professor at the University of Auckland, specialising in bioactive and functional food ingredients, lipid science and food processing.

Academic career
Quek earned a Bachelor of Science with Honours in biochemistry from the University of Malaysia, and then completed a PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Birmingham in 1999. Quek spent four years lecturing at the University of Putra Malaysia, before joining the faculty of the University of Auckland in 2004, rising to full professor in 2020. Quek has been a visiting scholar at Guelph Food Research Center in Canada, the University of Massachusetts and Xiamen University, China. She is the editor-in-chief of the Elsevier journal Future Foods. Quek is part of the Riddet Institute Centre of Research Excellence.

One focus of Quek's research is functional foods, and bioactive ingredients, and methods to stabilise and deliver functional ingredients, including co- and micro-encapsulation. She also works on lipid science, and the processing and safety of food.

Awards and honours
Quek won a gold medal at the Geneva International Exhibition of Invention in 2005.

Quek won a University of Auckland Excellence in Teaching Award in 2007. Quek won a Gold Medal at the University of Putra Malaysia's University Invention & Research Competition in 2002, and won the 2002 National Invention and Innovation Competition on Science & Technology, run by the Ministry of Sciences, Technology and Environment of Malaysia.

In 2012 she was made Fellow of New Zealand Institute of Food Science & Technology.

In 2014–15, Quek was Shanghai Outstanding Overseas Scholar, and in 2017, she was the overseas expert in food science in the 100-Talent Programme of Hunan Province.

Quek is a Guest Professor of Jiangnan University and the Oil Crops Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science. From 2016 to 2021 she was an honorary professor of Jilin University.