Category: Research

REU Site: An Interdisciplinary Research Experience for Undergraduates in Food Safety, Food Engineering, and Nutrition
June 4, 2018 to August 10, 2018, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL

Are you an undergraduate student interested in exploring myriad opportunities in food safety, food engineering and nutrition? Food science is a STEM area which produces far fewer graduates than the job opportunities. Would you like to undergo a rigorous mentoring and professional development training along with a paid research internship to fine-tune your skill sets required to become successful scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs? Wait no further and apply for this paid internship program. You will be trained by eight mentors from Illinois Institute of Technology and Food and Drug Administration for a 10 week period. The selected students will be given a stipend totaling $8,900 by this program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (Award # 1757989).

The goals of the REU program are
1) to provide hands on research experiences to undergraduate students in food safety, food engineering and nutrition to provide exposure to the field (special emphasis will be given to students without previous experience, minority students and students from community colleges)
2) to systematically train the students in transforming basic research ideas into practical applications aimed at solving real world problems for improving the safety and nutrition of our food supply through interactive seminars and discussions
3) to systematically mentor the undergraduate students to hone their research and professional skills through mentoring workshops, student presentations/discussions, interaction with graduate students, and K-12 outreach
4) to expose the students to broader fields of food science to enhance their knowledge in this field (with special emphasis on food safety, food engineering, and nutrition) through seminars and tours, and
5) to train the students on research and professional ethics.

Projects (major focus of the project is given within the brackets)
1) Energy-efficient design of sterilization of foods using pressure assisted thermal sterilization using COMSOL (modeling and simulation)
2) Low moisture food safety of legacy technologies (microbiology)
3) Shedding light on food safety: Application of a novel pulsed light treatment for inactivation of pathogens (engineering and microbiology)
4) Physiological chemistry of plant bioactives in humans (nutrition)
5) Application of cold plasma for enhancing safety of sprout seeds (engineering and microbiology)
6) Understanding transport processes in food processing using COMSOL (modeling and simulation)
7) Affordable nutrition through kinetic hydroponics (engineering design and microbiology)
8) Repurposing food ingredients for controlling biofilms of food-borne pathogens (microbiology)

Requirements
• Be a U.S. Citizen or green card holder currently enrolled in an UNDERGRADUATE program in a science or engineering discipline within the United States
• Available for the entire duration (June 4, 2018 to August 10, 2018) in Chicago for the training
• GPA ≥ 3.00 (if proper justification is provided, a GPA of 2.75 will be considered)

Application procedures
Send the following documents to Kathiravan Krishnamurthy (kkrishn2@iit.edu) by 5:00 PM CST on Monday, April 30, 2018.
• Completed REU application form
• Transcript (unofficial transcript)
• Resume
• Two letters of recommendation (at least one of them should be from a faculty)
• An essay detailing i) why are you interested in this REU program?, ii) what are your goals in participating in this training program?, and iii) what are your career goals and how does this training program will help you in achieving your career goals
• List the projects you are interested in

REU Application Form

Name

Academic year (freshman, sophomore, junior, senior)
Name of the current institution

GPA

Anticipated graduation date

Date of birth

Citizenship status (US citizen, Green card holder)

Address

Telephone

Email

Gender identity (optional)

Ethnicity (optional)

Race (optional)

Do you have disability? (optional)

Preferred REU project(s) – if you do not list any specific projects, you will be considered for all the projects

Would you like to be considered for other projects if your preferred REU project is not available (yes or no)