Minji Kim, Food Science, Won the International Association for Food Protection European Symposium Technical Talk Competition

Food Science PhD Candidate Minji Kim recently won the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) European Symposium Technical Talk Competition. IAFP is the foremost food safety science organization in the field.  

According to Assistant Professor of Food Science Matthew Moore, “This is very exciting as the award is largely considered among the toughest competitions among those for students who do food safety research.” 

Minji’s research project is being conducted in collaboration with Min Chen in the Department of Chemistry. It involves the development of OmpG nanopore sensing technology to detect and subtype foodborne pathogens like norovirus. Subtyping is important as it is needed to identify clusters of norovirus outbreaks and attribute a causal food related to the outbreak.   

Newcastle University PhD student Sarbjeet Kaur (Dr. Marloes Peeters lab) and UMass PhD Candidate Sloane Stoufer (Moore lab) also had a finalist entry in the competition for their research related to the development of molecularly imprinted polymer nanoparticles (NanoMIPs) to detect foodborne viruses.  

Both Sloane and Minji also took 1st and 3rd Place in the IAFP 2022 Annual Meeting Student Poster Competition.