RESEARCH PRIORITIES

1. Development of new and improvement of existing processing technologies that improve dairy food product quality, safety, or functionality.
2. Improving the safety of dairy foods and processing systems.
3. Modification of dairy product composition to ensure that dairy foods and ingredients remain a part of a healthy diet.

 

RESEARCH FOCUS

Value Added Dairy

• Physical and engineering properties of dairy ingredients
• Supercritical Fluid Extrusion processing of dairy foods
• Functionalization of whey protein
• Technological approaches to produce longer shelf-life-concentrated micellar casein from skim milk for ingredient use in dairy and nondairy food products

 

Dairy Microbiology and Safety/ Fluid Milk Quality

• Investigation of farm management practices associated with high sporeformers levels in raw milk
• Influence of processing parameters on bacterial outgrowth in pasteurized fluid milk
• Development molecular-based raw milk testing methods
• Dairy foods safety: intervention strategies for microbial inactivation
• Tracking and characterization of sporeformers in dairy processing systems
• Evaluation of raw milk tests for predicting pasteurized milk quality
• Extension of chocolate milk shelf life
• Determine the impact of annatto and bleaching on flavor and functionality of WPC 80 and SPC 80

 

Dairy Processing

• Milk protein rheology and functional properties
• Novel processing methods for the dairy industry