IAFP Announces 2009 Student Travel Scholarship Recipients

Thursday, May 21, 2009

The International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) will present Student Travel Scholarships to the following individuals at IAFP 2009, July 12-15, in Grapevine, Texas.  Sponsored by the IAFP Foundation, the Student Travel Scholarships provide travel funds to enable selected students to travel to IAFP 2009.

 Dominic K. Bagenda, a native Ugandan, recently obtained his Ph.D. from Hokkaido University in Japan and now teaches Science Communication at Future University Hakodate in Northern Japan. He is interested in the use of food fermentates and aspires to develop simple food-safety communication for rural communities isolated by illiteracy, language, and poverty. Mr. Bagenda is also active in work and charity drives that treat and educate victims of war, poverty, and disease in Africa.

Jeremy William Chenu is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Biotechnology and Bimolecular Sciences at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and is a full-time laboratory technician for a commercial testing facility. Mr. Chenu's research focuses on the "farm-to-fork" ecology and management of Campylobacter spp. in an Australian broiler chicken operation. In preparation for a career in academia, he is actively involved in several professional organizations.

Gashaw Mersha Tessema of Ethiopia earned his DVM at Addis Ababa University's Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and worked as an animal health officer while pursuing ethno-veterinary medicine and control of CBPP under the project of Pan Africa for the control of Epizootics (PACE). As a senior instructor at ATVET College, he completed post-graduate studies and obtained financial support for research on E. coli O157:H7 prevalence, distribution and shiga toxin identification at an Ethiopian export abattoir.

Hyo-Min Nang is a graduate student in the Department of Food Science and Technology at Dongguk University in South Korea. In her research that has been utilized as basal data to effectively manage outbreaks of food poisoning in restaurants, Ms. Nang constructs a QRAM using probability distributions, modeling the variability and uncertainty model of important risk factors. She seeks to develop and design a preventive system to minimize the risk of food safety and ensure safer food for consumers.

Aaron R. Uesugi is a Ph.D. candidate in Food Science at Cornell University. Through research that focuses on the mechanisms of inactivation and microbial inactivation kinetics in the Pulsed Light treatment of food-related microorganisms, Mr. Uesugi hopes to identify the strengths and opportunities for Pulsed Light in the food industry. Upon completion of his studies, he aims to work as a food safety scientist in the food industry or a government institution.

Stelios Viazis spent his formative years in Greece, returning to the US for studies leading up to his present Ph.D. candidacy in Food Science at the University of Minnesota. His research entails developing highly efficient lytic bacteriophage cocktails specific for Enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli and applying them onto EHEC Biofilms and EHEC-inoculated fresh produce for pathogen inactivation. Mr. Viazis plans to pursue research or regulatory work, eventually helping with food safety issues and resource management in developing countries.