Our experience and capabilities. Our primary research team includes Profs. Schoenfuss (Dairy Scientist and Processing expert), Pam Ismail (Protein/enzyme/analytical chemist) and Gary Reineccius (Encapsulation/flavor expert).
Gary Reineccius, Ph.D., has been actively involved in flavor research for more than 50 years. During this time he has published over 230 research articles, spent sabbatical leaves with Fritzsche Dodge and Olcott (purchased by Givaudan), Nestlé and Robertet S.A., and taught formal courses in Food Chemistry, Food Analysis, Food Processing, and Flavor Technology and Chemistry. His greatest interest currently lies in flavor encapsulation, emulsions and flavoromics (chemometrics as applied to flavor chemistry).
Tonya C. Schoenfuss, Ph.D., has been involved with food processing and formulation since 1985. Her research focuses dairy product quality and functionality, formulation, and analytical methods for evaluation. She worked for General Mills as a product developer for 11 years, working on fermented dairy products, dough and fruit snacks. She is an Associate Director of the Midwest Dairy Foods Research Center, and the faculty advisor of the Joe Warthesen Food Processing Center, which houses our pilot scale processing facilities.
Baraem (Pam Ismail), Ph.D. has over 20 years of experience in food chemistry research focused on analytical chemistry, protein chemistry, enzymology and chemistry and fate of bioactive food constituents. Her research focuses on chemical characterization and enhancement of functionality, safety, bioavailability, delivery, and bioactivity of food proteins and phytochemicals, following novel processing and analytical approaches. Protein structural characterization is performed using a number of proteomic analytical tools, aiming at linking structure to function. She also studies the stability and activity of phytochemicals as affected by their chemical structure, storage, and processing, using novel analytical techniques.
Supporting faculty
We have Ted Labuza (Physical chemistry), George Annor (Cereal science), Dan Gallaher (Animal feeding studies), Dan O’Sullivan (Probiotics and genetic engineering) and David Baumler (Microbial genetics). Partner faculty and facilities include the Joe Warthesen Food Processing Center, the Integrated Animal Systems Biology research group, and chemical engineering. Faculty also have access to all the characterization centers at the University of Minnesota at internal rates, making the research cost-effect and involving characterization technologies that are unattainable at most companies.