As summer comes to a rapid end, I would like to extend my welcome and enthusiasm for the 2023-24 academic year on behalf of the Department of Food Science and Technology. I hope you all had a good summer and wish the new academic year is a success. Three new faculty members have joined us in the past year on the Athens and Griffin Campuses: Dr. Joseph Usack , Assistant Professor of Sustainable Food Systems Engineering, and Dr. Christopher Kucha, Assistant Professor of Integrative Precision Food Processing, in Athens, and Dr. Hualu Zhou, Assistant Professor of Food Chemistry, in Griffin. In addition to our excellent new faculty, please join me in welcoming Joseph Harrison into his new role in our Extension Food Science and Technology office as a Program Coordinator. I invite you to sopy by their office to say hello and welcome them to FST, CAES, and UGA.
Our department is also pleased to announce the appointments of Dr. Koushik Adhikai as the new Research, Extension and Instruction Coordinator on the Griffin campus and Dr. Abhinav Mishra as the new Graduate Student Coordinator based on the Athens Campus. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. Yen-Con Hung and Dr. Rakesh Singh for their leadership and service over the past years in these respective roles.
I am excited to report that our undergraduate program under the leadership of Dr. Faith Critzer is continuing to show tremendous growth. Our undergraduate students numbers have doubled in size over the last two years, and we are confident that our future recruitment efforts will continue to be a success. Our resident graduate (MS and PhD), online MFT, and undergraduate programs are as strong as ever, with our students winning awards and scholarships at conferences and competitions all across the country and the globe. Our department was honored to award travel and support scholarships to encourage professional development for our graduate students. To all of the students that graduated over this year, we congratulate you and your achievements. We are proud of our student award winners and their accomplishments.
This year, our department hosted an Alumni Social at the annual Institute of Food Technologists conference for the first time. We would like to thank all the attendants of the event for coming, and we look forward to hosting the event again next year and in the years to come.
As we begin this school year, I would encourage you all to stay connected with UGA Food Science and Technology. We are very appreciative of all the support that we receive from you all and everyone for the commitment to our department.
The career world is wide open for students at the University of Georgia, a life lesson third-year student Emily Harris learned as a food science major in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Harris plans to attend the UGA School of Law to pursue a degree in food regulation and law this fall, a unique path she discovered through classes in the Department of Food Science and Technology.
In 2018, the United Nations General Assembly established June 7 as World Food Safety Day to bring awareness of foodborne risks and “to celebrate the myriad benefits of safe food.” With 25 faculty members involved in food safety microbiology, the University of Georgia has one of the largest teams of food safety researchers of any university. Their research and collaboration efforts contribute to a growing body of knowledge that ensures producers and consumers have the latest information about food safety.
With a climbing global population that continues to grow since surpassing 8 billion in 2022, steadily rising food prices, changing consumer preferences and growing interest in more sustainable production methods, the challenges to the world’s food systems continue to intensify. World-renowned food processing and engineering faculty in the University of Georgia Department of Food Science and Technology are training and inspiring the next generation of food scientists to blaze trails in their research and answer the questions the future of food will bring.
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