College of Engineering News • Iowa State University

On the menu: Engineering for your next meal 

Illustration of a ham, a cucumber, a lettuce salad, a glass of water, a beer, and a slided sweet potato on a cutting board.
Illustration of a ham, a cucumber, a lettuce salad, a glass of water, a beer, and a slided sweet potato on a cutting board.
Cucumber

Packaging reprocessed

Xianglan Bai, associate professor of mechanical engineering, leads an interdisciplinary team developing new hybrid, plasma-based recycling technologies to convert plastic films from food products into biodegradable polymers. 

Lettuce salad

Safer food sensors

Carmen Gomes, associate professor of mechanical engineering, was the first to develop a platinum interdigitated microelectrode biosensor to detect listeria contamination in hydroponic lettuce growing facilities on-site and in real-time. 

Beer in a mug

Science of suds

Beer brewer and Distinguished Professor of mechanical engineering Robert C. Brown teaches a new Science and Practice of Brewing course about the chemistry, biology, food science and engineering of beer brewing. 

Beef roast

Seeing steer

Josh Peschel, professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, is optimizing the placement of cameras in steer feeding operations and using new computer vision algorithms to understand and improve livestock health. 

Every last spud

Using drone technology to fly over fields to check for any sweet potatoes left behind after machine harvest, Dirk Maier and Lie Tang, professors of agricultural and biosystems engineering, are working to maximize crops collected and consumed – and prevent food waste. 

Parfait in a bowl

A cup of cure

Tom Mansell, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering, is creating new probiotic-prebiotic pairs that can be engineered to make disease-fighting drugs right in the gut, like antimicrobial peptides or anti-inflammatories.

Sweet process

After a 30-year career in chocolate manufacturing, John Kaiser, professor of practice in chemical and biological engineering, now teaches students the chocolate process from pods to the finished product. 

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