Appointments, honors and activities

May 2, 2014  


Faculty and staff honors:

- Kevin Keener, professor of food science, has earned the 2014 Rain Bird Engineering Concept of the Year Award from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. The award recognizes an engineer or engineering team for a unique contribution to developing or advancing a new engineering concept. Keener and his collaborators won the award for developing a high-voltage atmospheric cold plasma that reduces bacteria and spores in sealed packages of agricultural, food, pharmaceutical and medical products. The team of researchers included Keener, N. N. Misra and Dana Ziuzina of Dublin Institute of Technology and P. J. Cullen of the University of New South Wales.

Student honors:

- Two Purdue University food science students finished in second place and won $2,500 in the Roquette America Imagination Creation Finals for their vegetarian meat substitute MexiMOOffin, made with pea protein (Nutralys) and pea starch, two Roquette signature ingredients. Alexandra Tarr, a sophomore from Elburn, Illinois, and Sydney Rivera, a freshman from Indianapolis, created the sausagelike product that is baked into a corn muffin with beans, corn, chives and Havarti cheese. A team from Rutgers University took first place, and a University of Wisconsin-Madison team finished third. The three finalists competed at the Roquette University Global Innovation Center April 10-11 in Chicago. 

- The Purdue University Biowall team was one of seven winners at the Environmental Protection Agency 2014 People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) Design Competition for Sustainability. Thirty-five teams competed at P3, a college competition for designing solutions for a sustainable future. The Purdue team's project involved improving indoor air quality by installing plants in a home's HVAC system. The Youth Council of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers also recognized the project for having the outstanding sustainability entry of the competition. As one of the winners, the team could be eligible for grant funding to start to commercialize their idea. Team members include Michelle Bouley, College of Liberal Arts; Adam Drummond, College of Technology; Linhan Huang, School of Management; Andrew Martin, School of Civil Engineering; Dan Newkirk, graduate student in mechanical engineering technology in the College of Technology; Yu Xue, College of Agriculture (botany and biochemistry), and Moriah Yearwood, College of Agriculture (horticulture and landscape architecture). 

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