Ithaca and Cornell University

By: Nicolas Hardt

Today we went to 30,000 people big Ithaca, NY, 4 driving hours west of Boston and New York City, to visit Cornell University.

Up on the top of the city you can find the scenic campus of Cornell University. C.U. is a member of the Ivy League and can refer to 41 Nobel Prize winners that have been affiliated with the university as alumni or faculty members. With its 13,000 undergraduate and 6,000 graduate students the university is strongly known for its research in the areas of medicine, engineering, and agriculture and life sciences. On our trip, C.U. is also the only university besides UMass that occupies a department exclusively focussing on life sciences.

Quite early and well rested, after having a rich and balanced breakfast we arrived at the university to be very cordially welcomed by Daniel Aneshansley, Kathryn Boor, and Ashim Datta, all professors of the Biological & Environmental Engineering Department introducing their department. The department aims on transparency in the food science program. Therefore, a new building for the department will be shortly built to reflect this goal.

PhD students of our group as well as Ashim Dattas group obtained the possibility to introduce their subjects. Besides Anna, Nanik, Francisco, and Marta, who got to present again, Xin and Lena were giving their first presentations for WUR. Xin was giving an overview on her PhD project on modelling the optimal treatment design of drying of healthy foods, such as broccoli. Lena introduced her PhD subject on the separation of bioactive compounds (polyphenol) out of a waste product of soya milk production (okara) in a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly way.

The focus of Ashim Dattas group in the Biological & Environmental Engineering Department is primarily on computer aided food process engineering, food safety and quality production, and highly intelligent food processing machines (e.g. combine microwave & convective heating). This was reflected by the presentations given by the Cornell group about “Development of a raw milk assay to predict shelf-life of pasteurized milk” (M.Ranieri), “A numerical approach for predicting volumetric inactivation of food borne pathogens by Pulsed Light treatment” (L.Hsu), “Multiphase transport and deformation in food materials” (A.Dhall), “Taking care of garbage in outer space: The use of a closed-loop heat pump drying system for cabin trash on long duration space missions” (A.Arquiza), and “Micro-total analysis systems for pathogenic organisms” (J.Connelly). The visit at C.U. concluded in a visit of several labs of the host.