News

Members from the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering attended the 2016 ASABE Annual International Meeting in Orlando, Florida during July, making technical presentations on new research findings, participating in society committee meetings and other society functions, and engaging in collaborative activities with other ASABE members from around the world.

Congratulations to Sanliang Zhang, who’s project, Super Lithium Technology, placed in the top 5 of 42 entries.  In addition, the project won the Clean Tech Award!

Sanliang worked on the project with Colin Lewis, a Fiber and Polymer Science major.  Dr. Ning Pan was the faculty leader for the project.

Marianne Scokzek wrote the following about it for the UC Davis News website:

Thuy Tuong Nguyen, a postdoc in Professor David Slaughter’s lab, won the Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Research, presented by the department of Graduate Studies. This award is offered to recognize the vital role that Postdoctoral Scholars play in maintaining the reputation of excellent research at the University of California, Davis.

Congratulations to Amanda Hildebrand, a PhD student in Biological Systems Engineering, who was named recipient of the 2016 Kinsella Memorial Prize by the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences.

Dr. Gail Bornhorst was one of five 2015-16 Mentoring at Critical Transitions Fellowship awardees, which are presented by the School of Graduate Studies.  Her project, titled Enhancing teaching and presentation skills using microteaching principles, and her graduate student mentees, Yamile Mennah, Sarah O’Meara and Krista Drechsler, are featured on the graduate school webpage.

Congratulations to Dr. Borhorst!

Article Author is Andrea Thompson

While the genomes of many plant species important to the food supply have now been sequenced our ability to translate those advances in understanding into rapid advancement in crop cultivars is dramatically inhibited by manual methods of functionally linking plant response with environmental and genotype interactions.

Professor Zhang’s work was featured on CNBC in an March 3 article titled “We chuck out 31% of our food supply: How to stop the waste”.

After explaining the problem of food waste in our country, the article moved onto solutions, one of which was the biodigester that Dr. Zhang invented.

Read the article here.

The ASABE California-Nevada Section meeting on February 10 in Tulare attracted a good turnout.

Congratulations to the graduate student teams and their advisors for their winning entries in the poster competition.  First and second prizes in the graduate poster category were awarded to:

The Senate of the University of Guelph approved a recommendation that Dr. Singh be awarded degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa.

In his award letter, they explained that this degree is awarded in recognition of his outstanding contributions to research in agricultural and food science, and his global dissemination of food processing knowledge and technologies.  It went on to say that his leadership and innovative approaches to sharing have significantly advanced the field of food science and technology around the world.

Congratulations to Dr. Singh!

Congratulations to former undergrad Josh Goldschmid, who’s now a PhD candidate at Missouri University of Science and Technology.  He was honored with the Steven M. Atkins Ability and Achievement in Science, Engineering, and Technology (AASET) Award during the SAE International AeroTech Engineering Congress held recently in Seattle.

Read more about Josh’s award here.

Dr. Irwin Donis-González’s passion for agriculture and postharvest technologies began 10 years ago in his native Guatemala, working as an independent agro consultant upon earning his Bachelor’s and Licentiate degree in Agricultural Engineering from the Del Valle University of Guatemala.

Drs. Zhongli Pan and Ruihong Zhang along their team members of Drs. Chandraseker Venkitasamy, Ragab Khir and Hamed E Elmashad received a $1.1 million Public Interest Energy Research Program (PIER) grant to work on a new commercial walnut drying system that could save growers as much as 50 percent in energy costs.

Read all about it in the full article on the California Energy Commission’s blog.

BAE undergraduate Mitchell McCarthy is making news!  He was recently on the cover of the Sacramento Bee, and is featured in a UC Davis video.

McCarthy is involved in work on a mobile chicken coop, to transport pasture-raised chickens to various farms where they can be of use.  The project is a collaboration between several departments, and is led by Deb Niemeier of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Maurice Pitesky of Veterinary Medicine, and our own Jean VanderGheynst of BAE.

On November 9th, Engineering Dean, Dr. Sayakhat Nukeshev, along with seven faculty members from Agrotechnical University of Kazakhstan (KATU) visited our department as a part of ongoing collaboration between UC Davis and KATU. Former Dean, Neal Van Alfen, is the liaison for the agreement of Cooperation between UC Davis and KATU.

At the annual meeting of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers in July, Dr. David Slaughter was named a Fellow of the organization for his outstanding contributions to agricultural automation and development of sensing technologies for agricultural product quality and precision agriculture.