During its annual awards on April 29, the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences honored faculty members who have received competitive grants credited to the CAES of more than $200,000 during the past year; received patents; or published articles in high-impact journals.
Five researchers earned grants totaling more than $200,000. They were:
Abolghasem Shahbazi
Ph.D.
who, with Lijun Wang, Ph.D., received a grant of $1 million from the National Science Foundation for the CREST Bioenergy Center (a $10 million grant overall), and who individually received a grant from the National Science Foundation for developing a distributed, remote sensing and control system for smart agriculture.
Guibing Chen
Ph.D.
who received grants to improve the ultrasonic process for killing microorganisms in liquid foods and drinks, such as fruit and vegetable juices, beverages, milk, wine, and beer; and for studying ways to replace the large amounts of sugars and sugar syrups in cereal bars with a new generation of products that are nutrient-dense, low-calorie, low-fat, and low-sugar.
Shengmin Sang
Ph.D.
who received two grants totaling nearly $1 million to study anti-inflammatory properties in oat products and the healthy compounds, called polyphenols, in apples.
Hye Won Kang
Ph.D.
who received a two-year USDA NIFA Agriculture Food and Research Initiative (AFRI) grant to study the bioactive compounds in onion peel and a one-year nutrition research grant from the National Watermelon Promotion Board to study watermelon’s possible role in mitigating diabetes.
Beatrice Dingha
Ph.D.
who received a three-year USDA NIFA Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SSARE) grant to develop a sustainable cropping system for industrial hemp production.
Patent Awards
The research team of Shengmin Sang, Ph.D., and Yingdong Zhu, Ph.D., was recognized for receiving two patents in 2019 for its research into 6-shogaol, one of the bioactive compounds in ginger reported to have anticancer and anti-inflammatory effects. They will receive a plaque and a check.
High-Impact Journal Awards
Ten faculty members were recognized for publishing articles in professional journals whose articles are regularly cited across the academic spectrum, known as “high-impact journals,” whose impact factor ranges from 6.1 to over 10. They were:
Food science assistant professor Guibing Chen, Ph.D., whose article on the development of high-fiber wheat bread using microfluidized corn bran was published in the journal Food Chemistry;
Soil science assistant professor Arnab Bhowmik, Ph.D., whose article “A Review on the Current State of Knowledge of Growing Conditions, Agronomic Soil Health Practices and Utilities of Hemp in the United States,” was one of the first to report the current understanding of best soil health management practices for growing hemp. The article also identifies future research needs for sustainable hemp production in the U.S. It was published in Agriculture Journal;
Food and nutritional sciences professor Salam Ibrahim, Ph.D., who has published articles on hydrocolloids and acid whey production in Greek yogurt; food-safety challenges associated with traditional foods in the Arabic-speaking Middle East; farm-to-food applications of salvia plants; microbiological methods for testing protein and carbohydrate-based antimicrobial food packaging; and reducing fat uptake in deep-fat fried chicken. All of these articles appeared in the journal Trends in Food Science and Technology;
Professor Louis Jackai, Ph.D., of the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Design, whose articles on implications for intercropping to enhance biodiversity and the nutritional ecology of the southern green stink bug on selected varieties of cowpeas and tomatoes, among other articles, were published in various journals;
Food and nutritional sciences associate professor HyeWon Kang, whose study of the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects of the anthocyanins in red clover was published in the journal Nutrients;
Food scientist Shengmin Sang, Ph.D., whose research on ginger, dietary biomarkers and oat products has been published in numerous journals;
Food and nutritional sciences associate professor Reza Tahergorabi, Ph.D., whose articles on reducing fat uptake in deep-fat fried chicken were published in the journals Food Hydrocolloids and Trends in Food Science & Technology;
Biological engineering professor Abolghasem Shahbazi, whose article on the development of fluorine-intercalated biochar material for radiation shielding was published in the Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis;
Biological engineering professor Lijun Wang, Ph.D., with Abolghasem Shahbazi, published an article exploring the use of a new, sustainable material of iron oxide on the surface of silicalite-1, with the ability to efficiently convert biomass into hydrogen and carbon monoxide to make commodity fuels and chemicals. The work appeared in the Chemical Engineering Journal;
Leonard Williams, Ph.D., director of the Center for Excellence in Post-Harvest Technologies, whose articles on the micro and nano-encapsulation of vegetable and essential oils to develop functional food products with improved nutritional profiles and the efficiency of novel processing technologies for the control of the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes in food products appeared in the journal Trends in Food Science Technologies;
Food and nutritional sciences professor Jianmei Yu, Ph.D., for her article on the effectiveness of different proteases and IgE binding in reducing the allergen content of raw peanuts in the journal Food Chemistry.
