Harvard and MIT, Monday 12th April

It was a bright sunny day. This day we had planned to visit Harvard and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Everybody got up early in the morning and reached the reception desk of the hostel in time. We boarded a bus for horward and reached the “Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences” in time. Maurice and Francisco guided us to the exact location and after a few minutes we were in “Grace Murray Hopper Conference Room”. The programme started with a brief introduction of Harvard research group followed by FPE group of Wageningen University. Remko nicely briefed our hosts about Wageningen city, Wageningen university and on going projects of Food Process Engineering group. The regular presentations started after that, in an alternate sequence with one presentation from Harvard group followed by one presentation from our group. Anne, Nagesh, Jimmy and Kashif represented our group in this meeting. They presented therir projects effectively and satistified their audiences by nicely answering their questions. A short coffee break during these presentations was very helpful to keep us attentive towards the presentations. After presentations 10 minutes were given for general discussion during which we got a chance to talk freely to any person and exchange our business cards. At the end of this session, Elisabeth and Francisco thanked our hosts with some presents (off course, special dutch cookies (stroopwafels)) which we took with us from Netherlands. After general discussion we were taken to visit the laboratories. Labs of Harvard are well furnished with all kinds of fancy instruments regarding microfluidics, rheology, colloidal chemistry etc.

We left Harvard at around 13:00 in the afternoon. Everyone was hungry and the lunch was really a need of the time. We had our lunch from a cafe, took some rest and set out for Chemical Engineering Department of MIT. Mr. Barry S. Johnston was present at the door of the building to welcome us. He took us to the “Warren K. Lewis Conference Room”. Programme started with introduction of the history of MIT during which Prof. Marcus Karel told us about the history of food research at MIT, followed by introduction of Wageningen University and FPE group, by Remko. After this brief introduction there was one presentation from MIT side about the carbonation of foods. Most of our time in MIT was spent on Lab visits. There is a great work going on in the field of emulsification, rheology and biopolymers etc. After thanking our hosts at MIT we were free at around 17:30 in the evening. The drivers had to go to the airports to bring the taxi vans and rest of the people took their way to the hostel.

News Reporter
Abid Aslam Maan