Rodrigo Olmedo N. Director-General of DETERTEC S.A. Born in 1958, in Quito-Ecuador. He has a degree in Chemistry from Catholic University in Quito (1977-1984), with a thesis on Photooxidation Studies of Edible Oils, under the supervision of J. Llauger PhD (Imperial College, UK), which was honoured by its publication. His experience includes work with SHELL CHEMICALS - PROQUIM from 1984 to 1990, where he was directly involved with the consumer industry in Latin America. After a short period of 3 years acting as advisor for local Latin American companies on home product analysis, he co-founded DETERTEC in 1994, where he has developed his main expertise with consumer products.

Rodrigo Olmedo has directed DETERTEC's innovative developments on consumer understanding and modelling and simulation of consumer realities in a world wide base. He has participated directly on brand and product innovation projects focused on developed and less-developed realities, including markets in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, China, South East Asia, Latin America and Africa, through contract research studies with the most important multinational and regional companies. Starting in the year 2000, he has developed and implemented novel technologies to understand, model and simulate the consumer visual appearance at different market scenarios, which has expanded his area of expertise to other consumer products categories, those in which the visual perception plays a critical role on final consumer value, that includes: food and beverages, personal and beauty products, household care products, paints and finishes, and flowers and decorations. With more than 23 years in the area of consumer products, Rodrigo Olmedo is now an international expert on market-relevant studies as part of brand and product innovation efforts. In the year 2001 he was honoured with the biannual-award from the Latin American Association of Textile Chemistry for his work on the influence of bleach species on visual perception of garment colour care. In the year 2006 DETERTEC was selected as an Innovation to Success story by SAS, the world leader in Business Intelligence and Analytics software, due to its breakthrough virtual R&D technologies to product innovation. He is an active member of various scientific organisations, participating on several research committees, and in 2002 he had the privilege to chair the Marketplace Session at the Word Conference on Detergents, Montreux, Switzerland. His current field of interest is in relation with the mechanism of consumer value generation, and 'in silico' technologies to consumer products brand and product innovations. He has published articles in various scientific journals and proceedings, and has given more than 25 presentations at international conferences around the world (presentations). Since 1997 he has conducted more than 20 international courses in the fields of product performance evaluation, brand and product innovation, optical spectroscopy and visual perception (courses). He lives in Quito, Ecuador with his wife and two children.