IFT WORLD
Call for IFT awards nominations
The Institute of Food Technologists is accepting nominations for the 2007 Achievement Awards and IFT Fellows.
The Achievement Awards honor outstanding individuals, teams, and organizations and recognize excellence in a variety of areas, including teaching, public health, lipid or flavor science, food ingredient safety, industrial developments, and others.
A Fellow is a unique professional distinction honoring extraordinary experience and contributions in food science and technology, leadership in the profession, and service to IFT. The nominee must have been an IFT Member for at least 15 years and must be a Professional Member at the time of nomination. If a nominee is an IFT Professional Member from outside of the United States, the 15-year member requirement may be waived by the Awards Committee.
The deadline for receipt of nominations for the Achievement Awards is December 1, 2006. The deadline for receipt of nominations for IFT Fellows is February 1, 2007.
For instructions and nomination forms and lists of past Achievement Award winners and IFT Fellows, visit the "Awards" area of the IFT Web site at www.ift.org or contact Heather Lang, IFT Director of Executive Communications, at [email protected].
Call for abstracts for 2007 IFT Annual Meeting
The Institute of Food Technologists announces its annual Call for Session Proposals and Abstracts. With more than 1,500 submissions each year, IFT strives to select the "best of the best" session proposals and paper abstracts.
The deadline for receipt of Session proposals (Symposia, Panels, Workshops, and Roundtables) is December 15, 2006, and the deadline for Abstracts for Technical Research Papers (Oral, Poster, Division Competitions, Graduate Student Research Paper Competition, and 2007 George F. Stewart International Research Paper Competition) and New Products and Technologies (Oral and Poster) is January 4, 2007. All submissions are due by 4 p.m. Central Time on the deadline date.
The George F. Stewart International Research Paper Competition is designed to recognize food science and technology research conducted in countries other than the United States. The competition is open only to research conducted outside the U.S. and submitted by a primary author who is not a U.S. citizen. The deadline is January 4, 2007.
Building on enhancements of years past, a theme was chosen and sessions are once again encouraged to submit sound science content along with new and innovative learning formats for attendees. The theme for 2007 is Health and Wellness and Foods, and it will focus on elements such as product development, innovation, international and U.S. approaches, ingredients technology, regulations, and others.
Sessions will be limited to 90 minutes in length to enable attendees to participate in one entire session if they choose and network with colleagues between sessions.
The online submissions will open by mid-October 2006. For more information, contact IFT's Knowledge and Learning Experiences Dept. at 312-782- 8424 or visit www.ift.org.
Food Technology cover wins award
The cover of the July 2005 issue of Food Technology has won a Gold Award in the annual SNAP EXCEL Awards competition conducted by the Society of National Association Publications. Food Technology received the award—a golden sculpture—in the Magazine Cover Photography category. The cover photo showed a bowl of pasta shaped like a DNA molecule, created to illustrate the article, "Beyond Nutrition: The Impact of Food on Genes."
Food Technology underwent a complete redesign in early 2005, and the July issue was the first issue bearing the new design.
Morawicki joins U. of Arkansas
Ruben Morawicki recently joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas Dept. of Food Science as an assistant professor. He is a specialist in the areas of food processing and food packaging, and these are the topics that he will teach and research. A Professional Member of IFT, Morawicki was previously a research scientist with Tyson Food Co. after earning his Ph.D. degree at Penn State University.
Lachance honored at Rutgers
Paul A. Lachance was recently honored during the 5th Annual Rutgers University Food Science Community gathering for his contributions to the university’s food science department and the fields of food science and nutrition.
He served six years as chair of the department, two years as the faculty representative to the board of trustees, and four years as the faculty representative to the board of governors of the university. Additionally, he was the founding director and is currently the director of the Nutraceuticals and Functional Foods Institute of the Center for Advanced Food Technology.
As the first Flight Food and Nutrition coordinator for NASA (1963–67), he established the Gemini/Apollo flight food systems, formulated the concept of HACCP, and coauthored the first studies of bone mass loss and negative nitrogen balance in astronauts.
Lachance is a Professional Member of IFT.
Ventura earns CRC certification
Melissa Ventura, Executive Research Chef at Red Arrow Co., recently received certification as a "Certified Research Chef" from the Research Chefs Association. The certification is given to individuals who work in food product development, has expertise in culinary arts, and has knowledge of food science. Ventura is a Member of IFT.
In Memoriam
Susan L. Hefle was elected a Fellow of IFT in 2004 in recognition of her research and food industry outreach in the area of food allergies through her successful direction of the Food Allergy Research and Resource Program at the University of Nebraska. As codirector of FARRP, a program she helped found in 1995, Hefle participated in both research and extension/outreach to the food industry. She was considered to be an expert on food allergies and food allergens. Her research led to the development of commercial enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) for the detection of residues of allergenic foods that might contaminate other foods and creation of ELISAs for the detection of peanuts, milk, eggs, almonds, and walnuts. A member of IFT since 1985, she held leadership positions in several divisions, was an IFT Scientific Lecturer, and was a member of the Biotechnology Issues Task Force and a Council Representative to the IFT Executive Committee.