EDUCATION NEWS
Seafood expert Price retires
Following a 30-year career in public service dedicated to ensuring a safe and wholesome seafood supply, Robert J. Price retired from the University of California Sea Grant Extension Program in January.
A seafood technology extension specialist, Price is an expert on seafood safety and processing knowledge who has helped provide technical assistance and information to food processors, food service, importers/brokers, food educators (media), academia, and regulatory personnel worldwide. He has distinguished himself as an outstanding leader in his field, with accomplishments that include creating a seafood HACCP mailing list with more than 850 subscribers from more than 50 countries; creating the Seafood Network Information Center Web site at http://seafood.ucdavis.edu, the first Web site to address seafood technology interests; serving as chair and principal author of the Seafood HACCP Alliances’ Compendium of Fish and Fishery Product Processes, Hazards, and Controls; serving on the Seafood HACCP Alliance’s steering committee; writing chapters for the Basic HACCP Course and Sanitation and Control Procedures curricula; and training industry or regulatory professionals domestically and abroad.
He will become an emeritus specialist with the University of California at Davis.
An active member of IFT, Price is a Steering Committee member and Chair of the Aquatic Food Products Div.
Min receives Korean food science honor
David B. Min, of the Dept. of Food Science and Technology at Ohio State University, was recognized by the Korean Society of Food Science and Technology at the spociety’s Annual Meeting in Seoul, Korea, last November.
He was the Plenary Speaker at the meeting, lecturing on “The 25 Years of Progress of Lipid Oxidation and Natural Antioxidants.” Dong Hwa Shin, President of the Korean Society presented an Achivement Award to Min to recognize his pioneering research and distinguished contribution to the scientific knowledge of the singlet oxygen oxidation of foods.
Min has received a number of awards in recognition of his work, including IFT’s 1995 Lipid and Flavor Research Achievement Award, Ohio State’s 1999 Distinguished Senior Faculty Research Award, American Oil Chemists Society’s Research Award, and IFT’s 2001 Food Chemistry Lectureship Award. He has published 230 scientific papers in lipid and flavor chemistry in reputable journals and presented 120 invited papers and seminars nationally and internationally. He published or edited Flavor Chemistry of Fats and Oils (1985), Flavor Chemistry of Lipid Foods (1989), Food Lipids and Health (1996), Lipid Chemistry (1998), and Revised and Expanded Food Lipids (2001), all of which are authoritative books in their fields.
An active member of IFT, Min has served as Chairman of the Ohio Valley Section, is an IFT Fellow, and is a Scientific Editor of IFT’s Journal of Food Science.
Balasubramaniam joins Ohio State faculty
Bala Balasubramaniam joined the Ohio State University Dept. of Food Science and Technology as Assistant Professor of Food Safety Engineering.
In partnership with the food industry and government, he is developing an active food safety and technology research program that focuses on high-pressure processing, as well as contributing to relevant teaching and outreach activities. He works with a team of food process engineers, microbiologists, biochemists, and plant and animal scientists to solve emerging food safety engineering challenges.
Balasubramaniam is a recognized expert on high-pressure processing after eight years of experience with the Center for Food Safety and Quality Enhancement at the University of Georgia and the National Center for Food Safety and Technology at the Illinois Institute of Technology. At NCFST over the past seven years, he assessed the safety of novel processing technologies and studied inactivation of pathogenic bacteria and spores using high-pressure and pulsed-electric processes. His research highlighted the importance of considering thermal effects in high-pressure, pulsed-electric, and other nonthermal processing technologies. He also established and directed IIT’s graduate program in Food Process Engineering/Food Safety and Technology.