AIChE Local Meeting
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Food Safety
Alfredo C. Rodriguez
Director of engineering at the National Center for Food Safety and Technology (NCFST) in Summit-Argo, IL
NOTE: Professional Engineers can earn PDH credits by attending each of these presentations.
Location:
Cantigny Park
Le Jardin Room
1S151 Winfield Road
Wheaton, IL 60189
Cost:
$40 for Members
$45 for Non-members
$20 for Unemployed Members
$5 for Students
$75 for Couples
Agenda:
4:00 Grounds open
4:30 to 6:45 Wander gardens, W/ Mike Rouse
5:00 to 6:45 Cash Bar
6:00 to 6:45 Registration
6:00 to 6:45 PE Forum
6:45 to 8:00 Buffet Dinner, Meeting and Election
8:00 to 9:00 Presentation, Q&A
Abstract:
The National Center for Food Safety and Technology (NCFST), founded in 1988, is a unique food research consortium of the U.S. Food and Drug administration (FDA) Center for Foodl Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and the food industry.
The FDA established NCFST to serve as a link to the food and food-related industries and to house the CFSAN Division of Food Processing Science and Technology. NCFST is the one place where industry can work collaboratively on projects with FDA scientists on food safety and technology research.
Membership in NCFST allows companies to gain early insight into emerging food safety issues and health promoting food trends from the CFSAN perspective and to assess the safety of new technologies that may be important for innovation. This early collaboration with FDA may facilitate speed to market through the regulatory process.
SCIENCE FOCUS AREAS:
NCFST focuses its research on four major Science Platforms reflecting the organization’s expertise:
• Food Processing & Packaging
• Food Microbiology
• Chemical Constituents and Allergens
• Health Promoting Foods
The primary goal of these platforms is to develop projects based on stakeholders’ needs. Portfolios for each includes collaborative, leveraged and proprietary research and balances short- and long-term needs of industry members, the FDA and NCFST.
NCFST is well placed to facilitate innovation in the food industry through the assessment and validation of new technologies, especially new food safety and preservation technologies, aimed at delivering key consumer drivers of safety, health, freshness and convenience. NCFST also offers innovation in the area of nutrition research through science that validates impact of health promoting foods on clinically relevant end-points.
PE Forum:
The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying is
recommending a change in the Model Law that requires a master’s of science degree or its
equivalent beginning in 2020. That would be on top of the current requirements
that you have graduated from a four year, ABET-accredited engineering program;
have four years of work experience; and pass the Fundamentals of Engineering
examination. State legislatures and governing boards are being urged to adopt
this change by 2012 so it can be implemented in 2020. AIChE national has come
out against the implementation of this change.
The Chicago Section is hosting a forum at the May meeting to allow for a moderated discussion of this issue. Please stop by and expression your opinion in regard to this important topic for the future of Chemical Engineering.
Speaker Biographies:
Alfredo C. Rodriguez is the Director of engineering at the National Center for Food Safety
and Technology (NCFST) in Summit-Argo, IL. Formerly, he was an engineering specialist in the
Sterilization Science Center and previously was a Section Manager in charge of solutions
sterilization cycle development at the Sterility Assurance Department of Baxter Healthcare
Corporation in Round Lake, IL. His work deals with different technologies applied to
sterilization including steam, high pressure, gas, radiation, etc.
In addition, he is in charge of the food process engineering and advanced food process engineering class in the Illinois Institute of Technology (NCFST) graduate program.
He has a B.Sc. degree in biochemical engineering and a M.Sc. degree in food science from the National polytechnic Institute in Mexico City, and a Ph.D. degree in food engineering from the University of Florida.
Garden Tour Speaker: Michael Rouse
Formally trained in biochemistry and chemical engineering, Michael Rouse has always been at heart a passionate gardener and plant collector. Mr. Rouse has lived and gardened from Minnesota to North Carolina to Texas and collected across much of the rest of the country. After fifteen years as a biochemical engineer, Mr. Rouse took five years off to have a midlife crisis and start a mail-order/internet nursery offering rare and unusual plants for the Great Lakes region. After successfully completing his midlife crisis in 2006, Mr. Rouse returned to engineering on a part-time basis. He currently divides his time between his nursery in northwestern Pennsylvania and the Middough offices in Oak Brook, Illinois. At the nursery, Mr. Rouse's current focus is the development of new cultivars of ornamental perennial sulflowers in sizes more suitable for the garden and a wider range of colors than the typical sunflower yellow. At Middough, Mr. Rouse is a project engineer in the Process Group, where he works primarily on bioprocess projects.