Awards and Competitions

Congratulations are in order for BAE Adjunct Professor Zhongli Pan, who has been named a Fellow of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers!

ASABE is honoring Dr. Pan's long career providing scientific leadership in food and bioprocessing, and wrote in their award pamphlet:

By Tyler Barzee

Congratulations to Biomilitus, a team comprised of BAE grad students, a BAE researcher, and a Department of Entomology grad student student, for winning big in the UCDavis Big Bang! Business Competition.  The team won six awards at the competition, including the People’s Choice Award, $7,500; the Central Valley Innovation Award, $10,000; the Food, Ag + Health Innovation Award, $3,000; two prizes totaling $1,500 in a Little Bang!

By Noah Pflueger-Peters

Chemical and Biological Engineering Ph.D. candidate Jennifer Nill won the 2019 student poster competition at the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (SIMB)’s Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals (SBFC) for her poster, “A multi-scale study to elucidate the role of cellulose physiochemical properties in productive binding of cellulases.”

UC Davis Give Day begins on April 12th at 12 p.m. and runs through Picnic Day, April 13th, ending at 5 p.m. This year's Give Day features a challenge for the SmartFarm Initiative. The challenge is a great opportunity to help support exciting new agricultural solutions.  To make your contribution, go to UC Davis Give Day and look for the SmartFarm Initiative.

By Staff Contributor

The Innovative Infrared Research and Development Team is the recipient of the 2018 Research and Development Award for its contributions and accomplishments in innovative research and development and commercial implementation of sustainable infrared heating technologies for improved food healthfulness, quality, and safety while saving energy and water during food processing. The research team comprises Zhongli Pan, Tara H. McHugh, Chandrasekar Venkitasamy, Ragab Gebreil, and Hamed M. El-Mashad.

Congratulations to PhD candidate Yike Chen for winning the Student Oral/Poster competition from ASABE!

Yike is a 5th year graduate student working in Dr. Ruihong Zhang's lab.

Another year, another fantastic Picnic Day for our department!

And congratulations are in order for the team of BAE students, staff and faculty who received the Parade Marshal’s Choice Award for the department’s entry in today’s UC Davis Picnic Day parade!  This is an outstanding recognition of all their hard work and leadership in representing this year’s theme of Where the Sun Shines.  Compliments to the team and many thanks for their efforts on behalf of the department and the University.

It was clearly a day where the sun shined!

By Staff Contributor

Assistant Cooperative Extension Specialist Alireza Pourreza was selected to receive the Sunkist Young Designer Award that will be presented during the ASABE Annual meeting in Detroit in July.

Established in 1972, this award recognizes and honors members under 40 years of age (on July 1 of the year in which the award is presented), for outstanding contributions to the advancement of the profession and to stimulate professional achievement.

Congratulations to CE Specialist Dr. Irwin Donis-Gonzalez and Adjunct Professor Dr. Kurt Kornbluth, who are both on the team that was awarded a $790,000 Seeding Solutions grant from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), a nonprofit established in the 2014 Farm Bill with bipartisan congressional support.  The team is tasked with revolutionizing the food processing industry -- they will test new technology to improve the drying methods used in food production.

BAE Department Chair Bryan Jenkins hosted the annual fall quarter Coffee Talk on November 16.  The event welcomed new and returning students, faculty and staff, and fed the attendees lunch and coffee.