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Dr. Shyam Sablani Food Packaging

News & Events


2016

  • November: Hongchao successfully defended his doctoral thesis and Reza successfully passed his preliminary examination. Congratulations to both!
  • April: Kanishka successfully defended his doctoral thesis. Congratulations!
  • September: Shyam Sablani chaired a session ‘processing and Packaging Technologies for Prepackaged Meals’ Conference of Food Engineering, Columbus, OH
  • August: The Sablani group welcomes three new students Juhi Patel, Chandrashekhar Sonar and Saleh Al-Ghamdi.
  • July: Shyam Sablani received 2016 Marcel Loncin Research Prize from Institute of Food Technologists. He was invited as Distinguished Lecturer of Food Packaging Division and presented a seminar “Designing polymer packaging for advanced food processing technologies” joint Symposium organized by Food Engineering, Nonthermal Processing and Food Packaging Divisions of IFT. Kanishka won second place in the student poster competition for the Food Packaging division of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) 2016.
  • April: The Sablani group welcomes Aujcharaporn (AJ) Pongpichaiudom, a visiting scholar from Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand
  • February: The Sablani group welcomes Fakhara Khanum, a visiting scholar from University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan

2015

  • December: Shyam Sablani and his collaborators from WSU, US Army Natick and BGSU received $456,847 from USDA AFRI Foundational Program to work on a project ‘Development of high oxygen-barrier multilayer polymer films for improved shelf-life of foods processed using microwave and high-pressure technologies’.
  • October: Developing Value-Added Products from Washington Grown Red Raspberries; Shyam Sablani, Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Pullman;  $91,878 [more]
  • July: Poonam Bajaj, doctoral student in Biological Systems Engineering, has won first place in the student poster competition for the Product Development division of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) 2015. [more]

2014

  • November:  The Sablani group welcomes postdoctoral fellow Dr. Li Li.
  • November:  Shyam Sablani presented an invited lecture ‘Innovative Thermal Processing to Control Pathogens and Spoilage Microorganisms‘ at 9thFoodHACCP Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, November 03-07
  • October: Shyam Sablani attended IFT Journals Scientific Editors’ Meeting in Chicago, IL
  • August: A team of Kuraray America Inc. engineers and scientists visit our laboratory.
  • July: Shields Bag and Printing company management and scientists visit our laboratory.
  • May: Kanishka received a travel award from Puget Sound Institute of Food Technologists (PSIFT) to attend the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) annual meeting In New Orleans.
  • February: A research paper ‘Understanding package film oxygen transmission rate on lipid oxidation and oxygen reduction potential of pasteurized blue mussels (Mytilus edulis) in red sauce: A storage study’ by Kanishka was one of the six finalists at the Food Packaging Division of IFT’ 2014 Graduate Student Research Paper Award Competition.

2013

  • July: Sumeet’s research paper  ‘Silicon Migration from High Barrier Coated Multilayer Polymeric Films to Selected Food Simulants after Microwave Processing Treatments’ won Second Place at the Food Packaging Division of IFT’ 2013 Graduate Student Paper Award Competition.
  • April: Sumeet successfully defended his doctoral thesis. Congratulations! Sumeet will join Nestle in Cleveland, OH.
  • February: The Sablani group welcomes visiting scholar Pengquan (Johnson) Kuang of Beijing University of Chemical Technology, China.
  • February: Two students, Chen Liu and Geyang Wu, of Food Packaging course are the second place winners of the Flexible Packaging Association’s (FPA) 2013 Student Flexible Packaging Design Challenge.
  • January: The Sablani group welcomes two new doctoral students: Poonam Bajaj and Nydia Munoz.

2012

  • December: Sumeet has been selected to participate in the “December Career Day”, sponsored by PepsiCo and the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS)at Academy’s headquarters in New York City on December 10, 2012. Fifty exceptional students and early career scientists (MS, PhD, postdoc) have been selected for this unique opportunity to interact with PepsiCo’s R&D leadership, learn about their efforts to develop products rooted in science-based nutrition, and get an exclusive glimpse of how science has shaped their careers. He was selected to this award based on his research proposal “Pressure-assisted sterilization effects on gas barrier, morphological, and free volume properties of multilayer EVOH films” prepared with the help of his PhD research advisor Dr. Shyam Sablani.
  • November: Sumeet returns back to the lab after successfully completing his six moth internship at Nestle, Cleveland, OH.
  • October: Sunil, a former member of our research group who completed his M.S. earlier this year joins Mline Fruits, Prossor, WA.
  • August: The Sablani group welcomes a new doctoral student Hongchao Zhang.
  • June: Sumeet’s research paper  ‘Pressure-assisted sterilization effects on gas barrier, morphological, and free volume properties of multilayer EVOH film’ won Second Place at the Food Packaging Division of IFT’ 2012 Graduate Student Paper Award Competition.
  • May: Yarfon Tanongkankit successfully defended her doctoral thesis. Congratulations! Shyam presented an invited lecture ‘Polymeric based packaging materials for advanced food processing technologies‘ at TAPPI Polymer Laminations Adhesives Coatings and Extrusions, Seattle, WA.
  • April: Roopesh successfully defended his doctoral thesis. Congratulations! Roopesh will continue to work in our laboratory as post doctoral fellow.
  • April: The research papers of Kanishka and Roopesh won first and third places, respectively at the Lewis-Clark section of Institute of Food Technologists 2012 Student Research Poster competition. Congratulations!
  • March: Nathamol Chindapan successfully defended her doctoral thesis. Congratulations! Shyam presented a keynote lecture ‘Advanced polymeric packaging materials for food processing technologies‘ at the International Congress on Food Engineering and Technology, Bangkok, Thailand. Yardfon’s paper ‘Microwave extraction of sulforaphane in white cabbage (Brassica oleracea L. var. capitata)’ won the best student poster award at the IFET conference.
  • January: Yardfon Tanongkankit returns back to Thailland after completing her research at WSU. Her research program was supported by the Royal Golden Jubilee Schoalrship Program of Thailand Research Fund.
  • January: Roopesh received Graduate Student Travel grant from WSU Graduate and Professional Student Association to attend 11th Conference of Food Engineering to be held in Leesburg, VA from April 2-4, 2012.
  • January: Sunil successfully defended his thesis. Congratulations!

2011

  • December: Roopesh has been selected to participate in the “December Career Day”, sponsored by PepsiCo and the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS)at Academy’s headquarters in New York City on December 12, 2011. Fifty exceptional students and early career scientists (MS, PhD, postdoc) have been selected for this unique opportunity to interact with PepsiCo’s R&D leadership, learn about their efforts to develop products rooted in science-based nutrition, and get an exclusive glimpse of how science has shaped their careers. He was selected to this award based on his resume and a research proposal ” Protection of bioactive lipophilic food ingredients during storage: A study on micro and macroscopic molecular mobility in glassy food encapsulants” prepared with the help of his PhD research advisor Dr. Shyam Sablani.
  • December: Shyam conducted 3 workshops for the Indian food industry professionals in Baroda, Anand and Bangalore. The topics of the workshops were: Microwave Drying, Solar Drying, and Food Preservation and Thermal Processing Techniques.
  • October: Nathamol Chindapan returns back to Thailand after completing her research at WSU. Her research program was supported by the Royal Golden Jubilee Scholarship Program of Thailand Research Fund.
  • September: Shyam Sablani and his collaborators from UI received the 2011 Vapor Soprtion Analyzer Grant from Decagon Devices, Inc. The WSU/UI research team was chosen to receive the 2011 VSA Grant because of a diverse range of applications and is well known among the scientific community for their materials science research and extensive published works. The team will use the VSA to understand solids and water mobility, develop novel dehydration processes, evaluate the effects of moisture on properties of biopolymers, and develop “mobility maps.” This will help food scientists better understand the relationships between kinetics of water sorption and desorption, matrix mobility and the rate of chemical and physical changes in food materials.
  • August: The Sablani group welcomes Kanishka Bhunia, a Ph.D student. Roopesh received Graduate School Doctoral Scholarship from Graduate School, WSU.  This scholarship is awarded to individuals, who have shown outstanding research and scholarship among graduate student at WSU in the Ph.D. program.
  • June: Roopesh’s research paper  ‘Glass transition influence on ice recrystallization in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) during frozen storage’ wonSecond Place at the Refrigerated and Frozen Foods Division of IFT’ 2011 Graduate Student Paper Award Competition. Roopesh received Refrigerated and Frozen Foods Division Travel Award to attend Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Annual Meeting, 2011. Sumeet presented research posters ‘Transport of engineered nanoparticles from nanocomposite and coated polymeric films into food simulating liquids’ at IMPI and ‘Migration of selected metals from nanicomposite and coated polymeric films into food simulating liquid during thermal sterilization’ at IFT meetings.
  • May: Sumeet and Roopesh received a travel award from Puget Sound Institute of Food Technologists (PSIFT) to attend the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) annual meeting and International Microwave Power Institute (IMPI) symposium to be held in New Orleans in June 2011. Sumeet and Roopesh also received the Institute for Thermal Processing Specialists Ph.D. Scholarship and Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Foundation Feeding Tomorrow Graduate Scholarship, respectively.
  • April: The Sablani group welcomes two new research scholars: Nathamol Chindapan and Yardfon Tanongkankit from Thailland. Both Nathamol and Yardfon will spend eight months at WSU and their research program is supported by the Royal Golden Jubilee Schoalrship Program of Thailand Research Fund.
  • April: Prof. Sakamon Devahastin of King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok spent one week with the Sablani group.
  • March: Shyam was a part of a team awarded $4,999,994 from the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture for ‘Control of Food-borne Bacterial and Viral Pathogens using Microwave Technologies‘. The team members are Juming Tang (lead Project Director), Barbara Rasco (WSU); Mike Davidson and Doris D’Souza (University of Tennessee); Lihan Huang (USDA-ARS, Eastern Regional Center); Patrick Dunne, Tom Yang and Alan Wright (US Army Natick Soldier Center); and Denis Gray (North Carolina State University).
  • February: A research paper ‘Glass transition influence on ice recrystallization in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) during frozen storage’ by Roopesh was one of the six finalists at the Refrigerated and Frozen Foods Division of IFT’ 2011 Graduate Student Research Paper Award Competition.

2010

  • December: Sumeet and Roopesh were part of five-member team named as a finalist in the FPA Student Design Challenge, Flexible Packaging Association, Linthicum, MD.
  • December: Shyam conducted two 2-day workshops on ‘Thermal Sterilization Technologies for Foods’ for the Indian food industry professionals in Chennai and Mumbai.
  • September:  Sumeet won WSU Graduate School Doctoral Scholarship for outstanding research.
  • September: Dr. Uday Annapure, Associate Professor of Food Chemistry from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai joins the Sablani group. He will spend six months at WSU working on pulsed electric field processing of juice and UV-C treatment of fresh fruits.
  • August 2010: Roopesh received Kegel Fellowship award from Biological Systems Engineering department for academic excellence.
  • July: Sumeet’s research paper  ‘Morphological and Oxygen Barrier Changes of Two Multilayer Polymeric Films subjected to Microwave Sterilization’ won First Place at the Food Packaging Division of IFT’ 2010 Graduate Student Paper Award Competition.
  • July: Roopesh presented two research posters “Anthocyanin degradation in frozen and freeze-dried raspberries during long term storage” and “Enthalpy relaxation and fragility of amorphous raspberry powder” at IFT Annual meeting, Chicago, IL, 2010.
  • June: Roopesh received Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Foundation Feeding Tomorrow Graduate Scholarship – Institute for Thermal Processing Specialists.
  • June: Our research paper ‘Molecular weight effects on enthalpy relaxation and fragility of amorphous carbohydrates’ by Syamaladevi, Barbosa-Cánovas, Schmidt and Sablani was invited to be presented as a keynote lecture at ISOPOW 11, Quererato, Mexico.
  • May: Sumeet received ‘Travel Award’ from the Puget Sound Institute of Food Technologists (PSIFT) and Washington State Potato Foundation, Excellence in Agriculture Award, Pasco, WA.
  • May: Roopesh received ‘Travel Award’ from the Puget Sound Institute of Food Technologists (PSIFT).
  • April: Sumeet was awarded the “Sports Club Member of the Year” among 28 university sport clubs by the WSU University Recreation Center.
  • April: Luis successfully defended his thesis. Congratulations!
  • February: Sumeet was awarded Walter and Vinnie Hinz Scholarship for outstanding Academics and Research work from Department of Biological Systems Engineering.

2009

  • August: Sumeet was part of four-member team which placed second in the Idaho Milk Processors Association (IMPA) Dairy Product Development Competition.
  • March: A research paper ‘Differentiating water binding and plasticizing effects in raspberries’ by Roopesh was one of the six finalists at the Food Engineering Division of IFT’ 2009 Graduate Student Paper Award Competition.
  • June: Roopesh participated and won third place in IFT Food product development competition, Developing Solution for Developing Countries, IFT Annual conference, Anaheim, CA. His team conceptualized and developed a shelf stable, mango flavored, probiotic milk powder for under nourished children and pregnant women in African countries.
  • June: Shyam was invited as ‘Golden Jubilee Distinguished Visiting Fellow’ at the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, India.

2008

  • August: The Sablani group welcomes four new graduate students: Sumeet Dhawan, Sunil Kumar, Luis Bastarrachea and Jin Zou.
  • January: Roopesh Syamaladevi joins the research group.