The area of research that I am developing is the exploitation of agri-industrial by-products and waste-streams within a biorefinery concept, for the production of functional compounds for food and non-food applications. Food grade wastes have potential as sources of profitable food ingredients of nutritional importance such as phytochemicals, functional lipids or prebiotic carbohydrates. To this end, my research involves the utilisation of microorganisms and/ or enzymes for the biotransformation of waste streams into microbial lipids, platform chemicals and biopolymers.