Innovative Food Processing and Preservation Technologies to Ensure Food Safety

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: Consumer demand for safe, minimally-processed, and additive-free foods with fresh-like characteristics and extended shelf-life has led both researchers and industry to develop and apply food innovative processing and preservation technologies. The central theme of this project is to train four M.S. students to become leaders and experts in the areas of food safety and emerging food processing and preservation technologies. <P> APPROACH: A Project Management committee consisting of the four PDs will be set up for the four Fellows. The committee will meet every three months to evaluate the effectiveness of the training program and the academic progress and performance of the four Fellows. They will provide feedback and suggestions to the Fellows. In addition, each Fellow will have a specialized Graduate Committee in order to maintain a focus on the students research. The Graduate Committee will meet on a regular basis to evaluate and monitor their research progress. The advisors and the Fellows will meet regularly in the laboratory and officially once every two weeks to discuss their academic studies and research. The expectations for the Fellows to obtain core competencies, publish at least one research paper, and give a presentation at a national meeting will be communicated to them at the beginning of their graduate program. The Fellows are expected to obtain the following core competencies: 1) Theory competencies. The Fellows are expected to understand principles related to food safety and food processing and to apply the knowledge they have learned to solve practical food safety problems. 2) Research competencies. The Fellows are expected to be able to identify current research problems in the area of food safety, present their own hypothesis, write a research proposal, design and conduct experiments to test their hypothesis, collect and analyze data using proper statistics, and successfully publish their research findings. 3) Critical thinking and problem solving skills. 4) Communication skills. 5) Ethics and leadership skills. Benchmarks of progress will be set at the beginning of the program by the Project Management committee, Graduate Committee, and the Fellows. The appropriateness of these benchmarks will be reviewed every semester and modified accordingly. These benchmarks will include completion of coursework, GPA, research progress, and core competencies. The progress of the Fellows will be reviewed every semester based on these benchmarks to insure that training of the Fellows is effective. Feedbacks and suggestions will be communicated to the Fellows after the reviews. Outcome assessment of the Fellows will include evaluation of Fellows GPA, publications, awards, presentations, admissions to Ph.D. program, and their core competencies. We expect that some of our USDA Fellows would pursue a Ph.D. degree after graduation and we will encourage this as the Fellows interact with faculty from other Universities at International Meetings. We anticipate that some Fellows may seek careers with those organizations in which they worked during their graduate studies, including USDA research laboratories or DuPont. Exit interviews and post-graduation surveys will be conducted. The PDs will meet to evaluate the information collected from the surveys and make specific recommendations to enhance our National Needs Fellows program and MS program in Food Science. Project outcomes and achievements will be reported to USDA, Delaware Department of Agriculture, University of Delaware Cooperative Extension System, and other Food Science Departments in the United States.