New Building Gives Department Look of the Future

John Floros, head of the Department of Food Science, expects the new building to enhance Penn State’s role in the state’s food-processing industry.

There is little question that the completion of the new Food Science Building is a landmark event for the Department of Food Science and for Penn State. But the 130,000-square-foot, four-story structure will do more than provide a new home for the department; it will enable the university to establish a new role within the state’s food system, doing things that were impossible in the old Borland Laboratory, says John Floros, professor and head of food science.

“Our new building will serve three purposes: producing qualified graduates, resolving the research problems that face the state’s and the nation’s food-processing industry, and educating and training the existing food-industry workforce in new processes, techniques, and methods,” he says. “In the past, most college and university food science departments used their facilities primarily for teaching and research, and very little for outreach to industry.

“We’ll have research and teaching labs and pilot plants where we can bring in small, mid-sized, or large companies to work with us using their own machines and equipment,” Floros continues. “We can train their people, help focus and sharpen their company processes, or develop products on a small scale that they can then take into their own large-scale facilities for commercial production. Many of the large, established food companies already have their own pilot plants, but smaller and mid-size companies have a greater need for our facilities. We’ve done some of that in the past, but the new building will give our faculty a chance to expand their industry-sponsored research activities.”

One major benefit of the new building goes beyond academe and industry. The traditional lines of cone-seekers snaking down the block shouldn’t be a part of the new Berkey Creamery, which has a larger, more customer-friendly salesroom to go with the production facilities, support services, and office suite. Viewing windows into the processing areas will allow visitors to watch the production of ice cream, cheese, yogurt, and other items. The new, improved creamery was a necessity, Floros says.

“Almost every college of agriculture in every major university used to have a creamery, but most went ‘out of business’ because they were too expensive to maintain,” he says. “Penn State’s creamery has been successful because we’ve been responsive to the consumer. We offer products that our consumers want to buy, so it’s been largely self-sustaining for the last 15 to 20 years. But for us to maintain that record of success, we had to move to better facilities. The new creamery can produce the same products that we’ve made in the past, but our production will be more flexible. For example, instead of just cartons, we will be able to offer milk in plastic bottles.”

Next to the creamery and salesroom on the ground floor are unique, two-story-tall pilot plants for “wet” and “dry” food processing. Floros says very few other places have dedicated plants for “wet” processing—fruits and vegetables, edible oils, mushrooms, and related products—and “dry” processing of confections, powders, chocolates, baked goods, cereals, and snack foods.

Floros leads a tour of the unfinished facilities for (from left) Barry Zoumas, Wareheim Professor of Agribusiness, visitors from Giorgio Foods, Inc., of Temple, Pa., and Robert Steele, dean of the college. Added research and testing capabilities in the new building will especially benefit small and mid-sized food processors, which often lack the research and development facilities of larger competitors.

“In most other places, these processes take place in the same space,” he says. “But you may have big problems when you work with dry products in one area and have steam putting moisture into products in an adjoining area. We’ll be able to work on the engineering design of processes, as well as some on the fundamental science behind food materials and other products, whether they’re processed with or without moisture.”

On the second floor, near the department’s administrative offices, an expanded and improved sensory laboratory will have spaces for specialized sensory instruction, focus group activities, a preparatory kitchen area, and twelve computer-based product-evaluation booths.

“We’ve added both space and sophistication to the sensory lab,” Floros says. “The improvements give us the ability to study various ingredients, figure out how they affect the taste of different foods, and understand how flavors interact to develop products that the consumers want. We hope to become one of the major forces in sensory research in the country.”

Also on the second floor is a microbiology teaching lab, an undergraduate student study room, a state-of-the-art educational outreach center, and family and consumer nutrition education areas. On the third fl oor are foodchemistry and physical-properties labs for eight individual faculty research programs. A shared research-instrumentation lab offers dedicated rooms for equipment associated with rheology, spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, microscopy, and thermal analysis. Small break-out rooms afford space for casual or planned interactions among faculty, staff, and graduate students.

The top floor holds seven food-microbiology, food-engineering, processing, and packaging research labs, as well as a food-pathogens pilot lab designed to allow for pathogenic research in a contained, safe facility. The pathogens pilot lab will be designated by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an Animal Biosafety Level 2 facility, cleared to work with moderate-level human-disease biohazards.

“We’ll be able to use actual pathogens to study how to rapidly detect, inactivate, and kill them and how to make pathogen-free food products that are safe to eat,” Floros says. “By intentionally contaminating equipment, we’ll be able to find its weak points and learn how best to decontaminate it. This lab is a big asset for our research. Not only can we do microbiological and pathogen research on a very small scale, we also can bring commercial equipment in and do the same type of research on a slightly larger scale—things we couldn’t do before.”

— Gary Abdullah