November 4, 2025
From sourdough starters to kombucha brews, Penn State’s Fermentation Science Club is giving students across campus a taste of hands-on fermentation.
October 17, 2025
The Center for Faculty Development and Advancement invites program chairs, graduate program chairs, program directors, professors in charge, and others within the Penn State community who carry responsibilities in academic leadership to a session focusing on "Managing Challenges: Addressing Student Concerns," scheduled for Oct 23 from 1 to 2 p.m.
October 9, 2025
Catherine Nettles Cutter, a longtime professor of food science in the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, and her husband, Lester Cutter, have pledged a $200,000 estate gift to establish the Nettles Cutter Food Safety Endowment in the Department of Food Science. Funds from the gift will support research in areas of microbial food safety and food safety education.
September 23, 2025
The One Health Microbiome Center at Penn State has awarded the first cohort of doctoral students to receive the Biotechnological and Integrative Opportunities in Microbiome Sciences (BIOMS) doctoral training fellowship. Fellows will engage in rigorous training in microbiome sciences and biotechnology.
September 15, 2025
Eight projects, featuring research teams representing a dozen departments across the University, have been selected to receive seed funding from the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences
September 11, 2025
Young boys and girls eat different amounts if provided with fruit before a meal, with girls consuming more, according to a new study led by researchers in the Penn State Department of Nutritional Sciences.
July 22, 2025
Making wine is a complex endeavor — it depends on grape composition, microbes like yeast, and environmental conditions such as temperatures, rainfall amounts and soil quality where grapevines are growing. A team of researchers led by Penn State food scientists has validated a reliable and more convenient way to study wine chemistry than the traditional 5-gallon fermentation batch approach — microvinification, or fermentations of about a quarter cup.
June 24, 2025
Sherri Slocum has updated a previous estate commitment for a graduate award in the Department of Food Science in the College of Agricultural Sciences and The Arboretum at Penn State to now include additional graduate student support in food science.
June 11, 2025
For the first time, a team led by researchers at Penn State has developed a method of “fingerprinting” plant compounds called procyanidins, introducing a more sophisticated and accurate way to analyze the perceptual variation in many foods and drinks, including wine and chocolate.
June 6, 2025
Milk protein and cellulose derived from plants may be the next big thing in sustainability, thanks to a first-of-its-kind advancement made by researchers at Penn State. Using a manufacturing technique called electrospinning, the team created nanofibers 1,000 times thinner than a human hair and then manipulated those fibers into mats that hold promise for a variety of products, like biodegradable — and even edible — food packaging.
May 21, 2025
Throwing a little heat on your meal might be an effective strategy for cutting back on calories, according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State.
April 15, 2025
The Penn State chapter of Gamma Sigma Delta, the agricultural honor society, recognized faculty, staff, postdoctoral scholars and students from the College of Agricultural Sciences during its annual meeting April 3.
March 17, 2025
Spring is on the horizon, which means it’s time for one of the Berkey Creamery’s favorite traditions: voting is open to crown this year’s scoop champion in Flavor Madness.
March 5, 2025
As part of our regular “We Are!” feature, we recognize 17 Penn Staters who have gone above and beyond what’s asked of them in their work at the University.
February 27, 2025
Auja Bywater, a doctoral student in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, has been awarded second prize in the Global Challenges University Alliance 2030 research competition.
January 24, 2025
Penn State’s own Stephen Nedoroscik, gymnast, Olympic medalist and standout on the last season of “Dancing With the Stars,” accompanied by several of his castmates, made a sweet return to campus Thursday with a visit to what he said is one of his favorites — the Berkey Creamery.
January 14, 2025
This year marks the 51st anniversary of the Penn State Food Science Club, an organization that, in affiliation with the Institute of Food Technologists Student Association (IFTSA), promotes community within the university’s Department of Food Science while also providing networking and career opportunities to students.
December 10, 2024
Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences celebrated another year of outstanding success and accomplishments in research during the 2024 Research Awards Ceremony, held Nov. 19 at the Hintz Family Alumni Center on the University Park campus.
November 20, 2024
A two-week food science summer school was hosted by Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences this past July, giving undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to learn from experts both internal and external to the University.
November 14, 2024
Martin Bucknavage, Penn State Extension senior program specialist for food safety and quality, has been selected to receive a 2024 Volunteer of the Year Award from the Food Safety Preventive Controls Alliance, established to develop and provide training and outreach to support the U.S Food and Drug Administration’s Food Safety Modernization Act.
October 10, 2024
The J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Graduate School at Penn State named 110 graduate students as recipients of the 2024-25 University Graduate Fellowships and Distinguished Graduate Fellowships. The students were honored on Oct. 3 at a reception held at the Bryce Jordan Center.
October 9, 2024
Penn State Learning named Marielle Manes and Austin Bentzinger as the recipients of the Outstanding Guided Study Group Leader Award for the spring 2024 semester.
October 9, 2024
Graduate students took away positive experiences participating in Penn State’s inaugural Three Minute Thesis competition this past spring.
October 4, 2024
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture recently announced an investment of $11.6 million in its Research and Extension Experiences for Undergraduates program. Among the recipients, Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences was awarded a $750,000 grant to support 50 undergraduate students in exploring career opportunities in food science and nutritional sciences.
October 1, 2024
Baking in the test kitchens at The Hershey Company. Studying the effects of space weather on satellite communication with NASA. Working on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., as a congressional intern. Planning events at the Arboretum. These activities are just a few of the many experiential learning and professional development opportunities that Penn State students gained through internships this summer.
September 19, 2024
First used in the 1940s to monitor for polio, wastewater surveillance proved such a powerful disease monitoring tool that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention established the National Wastewater Surveillance System to support SARS-CoV-2 monitoring in September of 2020. Now, a team of scientists from Penn State and the Pennsylvania Department of Health have shown that domestic sewage monitoring is useful for a foodborne pathogen as well.
September 17, 2024
Jasna Kovac, associate professor and Lester Earl and Veronica Casida Career Development Professor of Food Safety in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, has been selected to receive the 2025 Award for Early Career Environmental Research by the American Society for Microbiology.
September 9, 2024
Penn State’s Berkey Creamery has nabbed top honors in the 2024 Centre County Favorites, a competition celebrating the places, restaurants and local businesses that central Pennsylvania residents love.
August 22, 2024
Cocoa may be the dark horse in the race against obesity, according to researchers at Penn State. Nearly one in three adults are overweight and more than two in five have obesity in the U.S., both conditions that come with inflammation-related health concerns. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded a research team, led by Joshua Lambert, professor of food science in the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, a three-year, $650,000 grant to characterize the sex-specific beneficial effects of cocoa against obesity-related inflammation and fatty liver disease.
August 19, 2024
Ten Penn State students, including nine associated with the College of Agricultural Sciences, have been awarded predoctoral fellowships by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, securing over $1.4 million in total funding.
