Dr. Daphna Havkin-Frenkel has unique qualifications. She holds a BS and an MS in Agriculture to a Ph.D. in Food Science and an MBA from Rutgers University. Dr. Havkin-Frenkel has over 30 years of experience in the area of flavors, mainly vanilla. She has published extensively in the area of vanilla biotechnology and has been invited to worldwide symposiums as a speaker on the subject.

 

Daphna organized the first international congress on vanilla in Princeton, NJ in 2003.  Since then she has ran bi-annual symposia all around the world including in France, The Netherlands, Mexico, the United States, and Tanzania.

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She has also run a vanilla course/program at Rutgers and other universities around the world. In the past, Daphna divided her time between Rutgers University, doing research on the development of new vanilla products, and Bakto Flavors, manufacturing and marketing a new line for the gourmet and cosmetic industries.

 

Today, she is CEO of Bakto Flavors and travels worldwide to help producers grow, cure, extract, and develop new products from vanilla. Over the years, Daphna has acquired in-depth expertise on FDA regulations for vanilla, working with companies to help them understand how to prepare and label their vanilla products in food.