Decades of Research, Education, Consulting, and More

The Department of Food Science and Technology has existed at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) since 1968. It moved from its original location in Filley Hall on East Campus into its current space in the Food Innovation Center (FIC) building on the Nebraska Innovation Campus in the summer of 2016. The four-story FIC building is a new cast-in-place concrete structure attached to a new steel frame structure inside existing, restored historical exterior walls of an exposition hall built in 1913. Nearly all the programs and activities of the Department take place within 125,000 ft² of the FIC building. Plentiful office space is available to house 35 faculty members, 76 graduate students and seven administrative support staff members. Research laboratories are found on two floors of the FIC building. One auditorium equipped for distance education, two classrooms, two training rooms and three teaching labs support instruction of around 100 undergraduate students and outreach offerings to others outside of the Department.

The Food Processing Center (FPC), a part of the Department since it was established in 1983, is also located in the FIC building. FPC is a multi-disciplinary resource for the food industry, providing a combination of consulting, educational, technical and co-packing services, all delivered in a confidential, price-competitive, and timely manner. Along with five analytical service laboratories, and office and conference spaces, FPC has six state-of-the-art pilot plants, a sensory laboratory and a product development laboratory overseen by 15 staff members and five faculty fellows. The dairy pilot plant that supplies ice cream and cheese to the UNL Dairy Store on East Campus is Safe Quality Food (SQF) certified and offers numerous experiential learning opportunities to undergraduate students. Additionally, FPC oversees a suite of on-site private offices, dedicated desks, and hot desks that can be leased to partner companies desiring access to the state-of-the-art food facility, trained staff and UNL students.

The Nebraska Gnotobiotic Mouse Program, established in 2008 and under the direction of two faculty members from the Department, has an analytical laboratory in the FIC building. Its germ-free mouse facility sits on East Campus where mice can be raised free of any and all bacteria, transforming their GI tracts into living but sterile mini-laboratories where the absence or presence of bacterial species can be controlled, and their effects measured, at a pace and in ways that would be impractical with human subjects. The FIC laboratory and East Campus facility allow for collaboration with other investigators in the Department and those associated with the Nebraska Food for Health Center (NFHC). The NFHC is under the direction of a faculty member from the Department and has laboratory and office space in the FIC building. It was launched in September 2016 to bring together faculty researchers from across the University of Nebraska system to tie gastrointestinal and biomedical research to agriculture, plant and animal breeding and genetics.

For more information about the Department of Food Science and Technology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln please visit: https://innovate.unl.edu/food-innovation-center

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