Food Science

Congratulations to the Food Science Product Development team has reached the final of the Almond Innovations contest sponsored by the Almond Board of California. Members of the team include Chinthu Udayarajan, Natalia Kubantseva, Hang Xiao, Poppy Indrawati, Akshay Arora, Rachel Prososki, Mateo Budinich, Ritu Mishra, Sandya Sridhar, and Bilal Dosti.

Thirteen dedicated Food Science students participated in the dairy products evaluation training offered by Professor Emeritus Bob Bradley and Assistant Professor Scott A. Rankin. For six weeks these students evaluated and scored dairy products, Monday through Friday, 7.00-8.30am. Their hard work was rewarded with a fifth place finish at both the regional and national competitions. At the national event, held in conjunction with the Worldwide Food Expo, a total of eighteen teams competed. Of the thirteen UW students that completed the training, three undergraduates comprised the official team including, Laura Folts, Dawn Preston and Poppy Indrawati, with Sharon Yellin as alternate. Two graduate students also competed, Natalia Kubantseva and Anupama Dattatreya. Aside from the fifth overall, highlights included Dawn Preston earning a third place in cottage cheese and Anupama Dattatreya winning the butter competition.

Congratulations to Melanie and Sean Dineen on the birth of their baby boy, Cael Patrick, on November 17th. In related news Carolina Vega has agreed to rejoin the Department as an Instructional Specialist starting on Monday November 17th. She will be working 20 hours a week during the rest of the fall semester and will be full-time during the spring semester.

Brad Bolling, a graduate student of Prof. Parkin, was awarded an IFT graduate fellowship for 2003-04. Bridget Schigoda was awarded an IFT freshman scholarship; the IFT Student Association George Foster memorial. Andrea Cisneros Estevez, a graduate student of Prof. Hartel, won first prize for the IFT George Stewart International research paper competition.

Angela Fisher, a freshman in Food Science from Watertown, WI, was selected as the 2004 Wisconsin Honey Queen. She will be traveling the state this next year promoting honey and honey products. She will also be working with Prof. Rich Hartel on a research project involving honey products.

The November issue of WALSAA Express newsletter had a feature news item on the Food Science students that won the national College Bowl championship at the IFT meeting in July.

Outstanding news. Jim and Deena Behnke kicked off the Food Science Fund drive with a one million donation to the department. A special reception was held at Babcock hall on 10th October to celebrate this event. Jim was a graduate student here and his supervisor was Owen Fennema. Professor Emeritus Joe van Elbe spoke of the times when Jim was a student here and his strong support of the department when he later became a top executive at Pillsbury. Jim is the current chair of the CALS board of visitors. His wife Deena also had strong connections with the department being involved in initiating the annual visits to campus to meet students on behalf of Pillsbury. The Food Science fund drive is a campaign to try to raise just over five million dollars that would go primarily towards scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students as well as instructional equipment. As Jim Behnke admirably described the fund drive as not being about paying back the department for the world-class education that students have received but rather paying it forward to provide the opportunity to others in the future to be able to have this educational experience. Anyone that wants to know more about the Food Science fund drive can contact Prof. Bill Wendorff, chair of the department at (608) 263-2015 or wlwendor@wisc.edu, or Prof. Rusty Bishop, chair of fund drive campaign at (608) 265-3696 or jrbishop@cdr.wisc.edu.

Professor Kirk Parkin was honored as a Fellow in the American Chemical Society (ACS), by the division of agricultural and food chemistry at the recent annual meeting of ACS in New York. Brad Bolling was awarded the 2003 Donald Withycombe graduate student fellowship in food chemistry by the division of agricultural and food chemistry at the recent annual meeting. Brad Bolling is a graduate student of Prof. Parkin.

Dean Sommer, a Cheese Technologist at the Center for Dairy Research, was named the 2003 Sanitarian of the Year at the Wisconsin Association of Food Protection fall conference.

The Department welcomes a new faculty member, Robin K. Connelly, who has a dual appointment in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering. She comes to us from Rutgers University in New Jersey where she did her PhD work on the Numerical Simulation of the Mixing of Dough-like Materials in Model Dough Mixers under the direction of Dr. Jozef L. Kokini. She also has a MS in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering from Rutgers and worked for a couple of years for Nabisco at their East Hanover, NJ Tech Center. She plans to continue to use numerical simulation as a tool to facilitate the understanding of complex food processing applications, with a particular emphasis on mixing applications. In addition, she is equipping her lab to be able to do experimental mixing and rheology research with an emphasis on dough mixing. A more complete description of her research interests and background is available at http://www.wisc.edu/foodsci/faculty/connelly/.

Leslie Plhak has decided to return to her native Canada to be closer to her family. The department appreciated her contributions to teaching and research over the past four years and wishes her well in the future.

Hang Xiao, a graduate student of Prof. Parkin, won first place in the Graduate Research Paper Competition at the annual IFT Meeting in Chicago. Lauren Sammel, a graduate student of Prof. Claus, placed first in the Muscle Foods Division Paper Competition and Brad Bolling, a graduate student of Prof. Parkin, placed second in the Food Chemistry Division Paper Competition at the IFT Meeting.

Outstanding news from the annual IFT meeting in Chicago. Our Food Science student teams dominated the student competition at the IFT meeting on July 13 and 14th. Our product development team took first place in the 2003 IFT Product Development Competition with their "Fruit Yo's" (yogurt/fruit leather snack product). The judges indicated that their presentation was outstanding, their product concept was great and they did an outstanding job of answering questions from the judges. Rutgers was second and Washington State was third in the final competition. There were a total of 23 student teams in the Product Development Competition this year. Members of the Wisconsin team were: Tammy Lin (captain), Dan Berg, Debby Levenson, Chinthu Udayarajan, Carolina Vega, Badri Narayanan, and Shelly Zhou. Our College Bowl team won the 2003 College Bowl Contest to give Wisconsin a clean sweep of the student competition at Chicago. Our students defeated the UC-Davis team 38-28 in the preliminary round and since they had the highest winning score in the preliminary round, they drew a bye to the final round. In the final round, our students defeated a strong Cornell Univ. team, 52-36. The score was tied at 36 with only 6 out of the 40 questions to go but the UW team finished very strongly. Cornell took second in the contest and Univ. of Georgia was third. Members of the Wisconsin team were Ashkay Arora, Chinthu Udayarajan, Rachel Ann Prososki and Janell Young. Wisconsin was the regional winner representing the Midwest region in the IFT competition.

Also at the IFT meeting Daryl Lund was given the 2003 Carl R. Fellers Award, which is intended to honor individual members of IFT and Phi Tau Sigma who have served and brought honor and recognition to the profession of food science and technology.

Rich Hartel was awarded the UW-Madison Food Science Club Outstanding Faculty/Staff Award. The award was presented to him by Sofia Erazo, 2002-2003 Food Science Club President at the Food Science Faculty-Student mixer.

Dr. David Horne (Charis Food Research, Hannah, Scotland) was here for a month on sabbatical working with Lucey and Mark Johnson (CDR). He also presented a seminar entitled Factors Influencing Acid-induced Gelation of Skim Milk. Dr. Lawrie Creamer (Principal Research Scientist, Fonterra Research Centre, New Zealand) visited the department and gave a seminar on the topic Milk Proteins: Chemistry, Technology and Emerging Markets.

The Wisconsin Union held a Babcock Ice Cream flavor naming contest in celebration of the Memorial Union's 75th anniversary. The deadline was Saturday, June 21, 2003. More than 750 entries from all over the country were received. The TV crew at NBC15 morning show visited Babcock Hall to help kickoff the competition.

In the CALS Quarterly Spring 2003 magazine, there were a number of article related to Food Science. Research by Parkin's group was featured under a heading Want herbal remedies? Look to your salad, health benefits of everyday vegetables could surpass those of exotic herbal supplements. Research by Lucey's group on yogurt was featured under a heading A more together yogurt, researchers aim to give this tangy favorite a better body without adding stabilizers. Research by Steele's group was featured under a heading Helping cheese age gracefully, enzyme helps ensure that it gets better, not bitter.

Ritu Mishra won the 2003 Norman F. Olson Scholarship award, which was presented at the Wisconsin Cheese Industry Conference held in LaCrosse.

The annual Babcock Associates meeting was held in February and industry personnel (many of them alumni) joined faculty for a range of discussions and presentations.

Rich Hartel's commitment to teaching, and student learning have earned him the 2003 Spitzer Excellence in Teaching Award from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. This award was presented at the Gamma Sigma Delta Banquet on April 9, 2003. Rich's interest in teaching has resulted in him taking leadership roles on curriculum issues at departmental, college and national levels. He teaches Introduction to Food Science, Food Processing I, Food Processing II (both with Doug Hyslop), Principles of Food Engineering (with Doug Hyslop), Food Process Engineering (primarily for students in Chemical Engineering) and Phase Transitions in Food.

Bill Hoesly of the CDR has won the 2003 CALS Classified Employee Recognition Award for his efforts supporting the research, applications and specialty cheese programs of the CDR for the WI dairy industry.

The Dairy plant replaced its milk carton filling machine with a plastic bottle filler. Food Science staff worked with the Division of University House marketing group to help design new labels for the containers, with the final choice selected by UW students.

Prof. Parkin's research on the health-promoting properties among ordinary plants we grow for food, was recently a featured news story. These plants are cultivated here in Wisconsin, such as garlic, kale, beets, corn and green beans. Using a well-known in vitro technique for screening possible cancer-preventive agents, they showed that crude vegetable extracts triggered increases in protective proteins, called phase II enzymes. Phase II enzymes work in concert with another group of proteins, called phase I enzymes, to detoxify cancer-causing agents in the liver and other organs, and purge them from the body. Due to these activities, high levels of both sets of proteins - but especially phase II enzymes - are thought to help protect against cancer. Parkin cautions that his research group still has much work to do towards characterizing the specific compounds in vegetables that carry cancer-protective effects, and demonstrating a true health benefit for people. Still, he's convinced that today's neglected, humdrum plant foods could be an important part of tomorrow's preventive medicine. (This story was also featured in Wisconsin Week, January 29, 2003).

Efforts to promote sheep milk for the production of specialty cheese was featured in CALS Quarterly, Winter 2002-2003. Prof. Wendorff and the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research have investigated blends of cow and sheep milk to create tasty new specialty cheese, which are a rapidly growing segment of Wisconsin cheese production. Lack of sufficient volume of sheep milk has hampered efforts to develop sheep cheeses and recent research has focused on methods to preserve sheep milk until sufficient volume has been collected to allow cheese to be made.