Suzanne Preddie-Atterby – molecular biologist and a Bayn pioneer

Our heroes. That is what we call our col­leagues, who work with research and devel­op­ment of our sweet­ened fibres. It is their knowl­edge, expe­ri­ence and dili­gent work that makes Bayn the lead­ing sup­pli­er of sweet­ened fibres. And these peo­ple are the ones that help you choose the right sweet­ened fibres, and fine-tune the com­po­si­tion for your appli­ca­tion, or cre­ate your own solu­tion for sug­ar reduc­tion. Although they are heroes, they are rarely seen and heard. We should rem­e­dy that. In a series of arti­cles, you get to meet our heroes.

Suzanne Preddie-Atterby is the one who has worked the longest time of all at Bayn. During her stud­ies at Stockholm University, Suzanne came in con­tact with Professor Jan Geuns. Jan Geuns is active at the University of Leuven Belgium and has been research­ing ste­via for more than 20 years. He is the chair­man of the European Stevia Association (EUSTAS), which was the main appli­cant for stevia’s approval with­in the EU.

Jan Geuns brought Suzanne togeth­er with Bayn’s founder, and the col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bayn gained momen­tum in 2010.

Since then, Suzanne’s pro­fes­sion­al roles have changed over time. And as a pio­neer at Bayn, her skills are hard to beat. Meet Suzanne Preddie-Atterby – one of Bayn’s heroes.

Name

Suzanne Preddie-Atterby

Born

1966

Work

Regulation and sales administrator

In my spare time

My hob­by, besides being in the kitchen, is that I have a small lab­o­ra­to­ry for cos­met­ics in the base­ment. I make extracts, creams and soaps – all of it is plant-based.

What kind of background do you have?

I am a biol­o­gist at heart and have stud­ied in both Canada and Sweden. I have a master’s degree with a focus on mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy and mol­e­c­u­lar ecol­o­gy, such as bio­log­i­cal process­es in TBE ticks. But I also stud­ied food sci­ence in Sweden.

Why did you choose this academic path?

I have always been inter­est­ed in biol­o­gy in what­ev­er form. Both food and plants inter­est me. I sim­ply love it.

How can you use your knowledge?

Knowledge of mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy is impor­tant for deal­ing with chal­lenges in every­thing from plant cul­ti­va­tion and med­i­cine to nan­otech­nol­o­gy. As a mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gist, you can, for instance, work on the devel­op­ment of food and devel­op­ment of drugs, and do sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of bio­log­i­cal data.
Thanks to my knowl­edge of mol­e­c­u­lar ecol­o­gy, I’ve also got knowl­edge of safe­ty and con­trol, which has been real­ly use­ful for my job at Bayn.

Tell us about your relationship with stevia!

During my stud­ies in Sweden, peo­ple start­ed talk­ing about new sweet­en­ers. I heard about ste­via and ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides and imme­di­ate­ly became curi­ous (Editor’s note: ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides are an extract from the ste­via plant). The rea­son is that ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides are herbal, have no calo­ries and are an alter­na­tive to arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers, such as aspar­tame. I thought this might real­ly be some­thing. I then con­tact­ed Professor Jan Geuns, who has been research­ing ste­via for more than 20 years.

So, this is how you got in touch with Bayn?

Yes, that’s right. Professor Geuns tipped me about Bayn and intro­duced me to Bayn’s founder Lucy Dahlgren. He also invit­ed me to a ste­via con­fer­ence on Malta.

What happened then?

At the time it was Lucy and I work­ing full time try­ing to build some­thing. When I look back, what we did was pret­ty far out. And very brave!

As a groundbreaker, what kind of things did you work with?

It should be remem­bered that we were real­ly in the start­ing pits. Steviol gly­co­sides were not yet approved, but I fol­lowed the approval process, gath­ered infor­ma­tion, did some bench­mark­ing between dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies, but also a lot of research to learn more about the ste­via plant and how it works in the body. I also worked on legal as well as tech­ni­cal and appli­ca­tion issues.

Oh, that sounds like a hectic period?

Yes, there was a lot going on. A mile­stone was when we made an agree­ment with Barentz, a lead­ing inter­na­tion­al sup­pli­er of ingre­di­ents. Stevia was new, the mar­ket was new, and I did a lot of train­ing with the sales staff. We attend­ed many ste­via con­fer­ences and we were look­ing for peo­ple to devel­op our prod­ucts togeth­er with. It was a lot of every­thing dur­ing these years. I trav­elled a lot but also learned a lot. Not least I got to share a lot.

And today, how would you describe a normal working day?

Bayn is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny today. Now we have solu­tions that reduce sug­ar one-on-one in dif­fer­ent appli­ca­tions. For my own part, I am now focus­ing on reg­u­la­tions and leg­is­la­tion. I work with ques­tions and answers and pro­vide sup­port to the sales depart­ment. If cus­tomers have ques­tions about leg­is­la­tion or tech­ni­cal issues, they can always come to me. Although I know a lot, I don’t know every­thing. In such cas­es, I just turn to our team in research and devel­op­ment. They’re great!