290303 Engineering Technology for Food and Health

Monday, October 29, 2012: 12:40 PM
402 (Convention Center )
Emmanuel A. Dada, ChemProcess Technologies (CPT), LLC, League City, TX, Thomas Mensah, Georgia Aerospace Corporation, Atlanta, GA, Derrick K. Rollins Sr., Chemical and Biological Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, Paula Hammond, Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, Antonio Garcia, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ and Irvin Osborne-Lee, Chemical Engineering, Prairie View A&M University, Prairie View, TX

Chemical engineers have mastered technologies ranging from energy and environmental systems to biomedical systems.  Many of these new developments have significantly impacted the growth of nations and societies with significant wealth.  The application of technological knowledge and innovative engineering approaches that address the production, transport and distribution of food and medicine in less developed areas represents important and relatively less explored challenges for chemical engineers include an investigation of how scientific developments.   As an example, the efforts of the Meridian Institute, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to explore the use of technology in aiding small independent farmers in East and West Africa in the harvesting and transport of food to facilitate food commerce will be briefly discussed.    The potential applications of materials science and nanotechnology toward the development of new means of packaging, transporting and delivering vaccines affordably to countries with lower access will also be described.   General discussion will include the question of how chemical engineers might best contribute to issues of food and health in the different parts of the global community, what kinds of technological challenges exist in these areas, and how such efforts might be facilitated, resourced and enabled.

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