Swantje Breunig

Swantje Breunig, MSc, serves as an External Employee and Postdoctoral Researcher in Food Quality and Design within the Food Process Engineering group at Wageningen University. Her research focuses on dairy science with specialization in goat milk composition and functionality.

Her primary research interests center on dairy protein chemistry, particularly casein micelle structure, genetic variation in milk composition, and heat-induced changes in dairy products. Using advanced analytical techniques like liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, she investigates how compositional variations affect functional properties such as coagulation and gelation.

Analysis of her recent publications reveals a consistent focus on comparative dairy science between goat and cow milk, with particular emphasis on casein variants, micelle size determination, and the interplay between genetic factors and environmental influences on milk composition. Her work bridges fundamental food chemistry with practical dairy processing applications.

Dr. Breunig recently completed her PhD dissertation titled Goat milk caseins: compositional variation, heat-induced changes, and coagulation properties (June 2025), which formed the foundation of her ongoing postdoctoral research within the project Natural variation in composition and functionality of goat milk caseins.