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UF juiced for R&D

The University of Florida’s packaging department kicks off with a full slate of applied research projects including these for food and RFID.

Pw 12900 U Of F Logo

In just three years, the packaging science program at the University of Florida, Gainesville, has experienced incredible growth. Since the official launch of packaging as a new major during the fall 2001 semester, undergraduate enrollment in the UF program has doubled each year. Currently, 27 students are enrolled for the spring 2004 semester. Degrees awarded at the completion of the program is the Bachelor of Science in packaging science.

Like the program itself, the packaging building was built from scratch. A new facility was dedicated in 2001 with all the amenities a modern building offers including spacious, well-lighted laboratories. The faculty has quickly been filling the lab space with timely research projects that draw the interest of—and funding from—packagers and vendors.

For example, radio-frequency identification is a topic as hot as Florida in summer—Packaging World’s visit, fortunately, was this spring—so it should have come as no surprise that the packaging laboratories include production-scale RFID portals (see sidebar opposite).

“We’re pretty busy with projects,” says assistant professor Bruce Welt. Welt is a chemical engineer with a master’s degree in food science from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, and a Ph.D. in food process engineering from UF. He has a real-world background including working in research and development at Nestle.

“Our goal is to remain diverse by applying knowledge across industry lines,” says Welt. “In Florida, there are significant opportunities for packaging in medical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, food, waste, and gerontology. We want to develop a reputation of service and expertise in all of these areas, rather than focusing on any one industry or segment.”

Still, it seems natural that the latest projects in UF’s packaging science program have a food- and seafood-based flavor as these examples show:

Fresh Seafood Packaging A recent Food and Drug Administration ruling has essentially halted the practice of packing fresh fish in hermetically sealed packaging, which can cause botulism. FDA guidelines require such packaging to use either films with a minimum oxygen transmission rate of 10ꯠ cc O2/m2 per day or use of a time-temperature indicator (TTI) device to ensure products are not exposed to thermal abuse.

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