Macromolecules Innovation Institute

Research Interests:

Research program includes both applied and more basic research in the areas of:

• Sensory Evaluation, with a focus on food and emotions.  My group is evaluating and using assessment tools to measure implicit and explicit emotions and how these tools assist in providing additional consumer insight for food, packaging, and food choice and behavior. Projects in this area are multidisciplinary in nature, interacting with faculty in food science, psychology, engineering/statistics, arts, accounting and information systems, human nutrition, and/or leadership and education.  Other projects may be commodity focused, such as sensory quality on spices, sweeteners, fish and shellfish, meat, etc.

• Food Chemistry, with a focus on oxidation.  Research in this area investigates the effect of light, oxygen, and photosensitive compounds on oxidation reactions and subsequent implications to color, flavor and sensory quality.

• Food Packaging, with a focus on sensory interactions.  Interacting with food packaging and retail companies and national level organizations allows practical and applied research for improving packaging material design to protect food and beverage quality.  Project emphasis includes evaluating packaging materials for light and oxygen barrier properties for maintain/improving food and beverage sensory quality.

• Water for Health, with a focus on water quality as related to effect on food/beverage quality, sensory perception, and consumer choice and behavior.  Working within the Water INTERface IGEP program, students in this research area will benefit from interactions with faculty from the Departments of Human Nutrition, Foods and Exercise, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Biology, and others.  Current projects in this area include qualitative and analytica research about drinking water sources on campus, implications of metals in water on beverage quality, perception of metallic flavor, and implications to biological fluids such as milk and saliva.

• Milk and Dairy Foods, with a focus on emulsion stability, flavor and sensory quality. Many projects within this area are integrated within the basic categories of sensory evaluation, food chemistry, and food packaging.  Most projects involve some type of processing, packaging, chemistry and sensory activities.

• Functional Foods.  These projects are integrated with the basic categories of sensory evaluation, food chemistry and food packaging as we study the effects of functional ingredients for health on oxidative stability of the food and packaging options for protecting the health-promoting ingredients.