Matteo Ressa, CEO of ChefPassport, Monica Serban, economist turned screenwriter and Adelene Lai from Science Slam talk with Lisa Burke

ChefPassport - Matteo Ressa

From tech maven to culinary visionary, Matteo Ressa talks about his global cook-meets-tech start-up ChefPassport.

Italian by origin, Matteo Ressa is CEO and co-founder of ChefPassport, which combines his cultural love of food with a background career working in digital innovation for companies such as Amazon, Vodafone and BMW.

Matteo's vision is to create a global network of chefs who, virtually or in-real-life, create cooking experiences for individuals or teams of people. Matteo aims to develop a digital storytelling behind cooking, so that people can learn about other cultures and foods directly from the kitchens of those chefs.

Covid helped to strengthen the idea that teams can bond, even virtually, with platforms such as ChefPassport. Currently there are about 10 million global users of virtual team-building platforms and this is set to grow 15% over the next 5 years.

Given his own family’s dietary requirements, ranging from diabetic to coeliac disease, to a baby, Matteo is also developing AI to help families develop recipes to fit all a family’s needs.

Environmental Comedy - Monica Serban

Monica Serban, Romanian by origin, is an environmental economist turned screenwriter. After working with EU funded environmental projects for many years, such as biodiversity for the Natura 2000 network of protected areas, she pivoted to comedy screenwriting!

In her homeland of Romania, Monica was instrumental in building the environmental portfolio for her country from scratch. She didn’t even have a desk to start with.

Through this work, her passion for the environment has not wavered, but she feels that a new lens through comedy could help increase awareness in a novel way.

Monica has always had a deep passion for writing. Aged 9 she won a competition with a poem entitled ‘The Glory of Communism’ (noting that this was her first foray into satire).

During covid, Monica decided to move towards what she has always loved - the art of writing. After a few intense courses, she wrote the environmental sitcom ‘Ten to Midnight’. Monica’s pilot script won 6 international accolades, including Best TV series project in English language and is currently seeking a brave, forward-thinking producer to take it on.

Science Slam - Adelene Lai

Adelene Lai enjoyed her own participation in last year’s Science Slam (where she came second) that she has now joined the organisational team for this year’s event.

This year marks the 8th edition of Science Slam and you can book tickets (just €5) to come, watch and support at Neimenster Abbey on Friday 15th September at 7pm.

The event is an opportunity for the public to hear researchers talk about their work in a fun way and then vote for your favourite.

SuperJhemp will be the star guest showing some cool experiments on stage and the main goal is for everyone to have fun and learn a little bit about a very diverse range of subjects.

Tickets: https://www.neimenster.lu/en/events/science-slam/