Bio: Yifan Cheng is an assistant professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology at Virginia Tech. Cheng’s research integrates chemistry, microbiology, and material science and engineering to illuminate interfacial phenomena key to food safety, quality, and sustainability, which in turn enable rational design of next-generation materials for food packaging and beyond. His major research interests include developing the Orthogonal NanoEngineering (ONE) as a philosophy and a synthesis platform for illuminating the mechanisms underpinning important interfacial phenomena encountered in food and biomedical sciences, such as bacterial attachment, enzymatic reactions, and molecular sensing; predicting and directing bacteria-material interactions via properties and cues borne on the surface of materials for improving food safety; immobilization of enzymes on material surfaces within engineered microenvironments for effective enzymatic membrane reactors used in food waste valorization; and intelligent packaging enabled by low-cost sensors made of polymer coatings that respond to spoilage-associated small gas molecules in the package headspace.

Professor Yifan Cheng received his dual BSc degree in Plant Science and Technology from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (China) and Food Science from Cornell University (USA). He stayed at Cornell to pursue a Ph.D. with Dr. Carmen I. Moraru, investigating bacterial attachment to material surfaces with precisely controlled nanotopography, with a focus on developing predictive models for elucidating bacteria−surface inter- actions. Before joining the faculty of FST at VT, he worked as a USDA NIFA postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Rong Yang on vapor-deposition of functional polymer thin films within nanoconfined structures, which have important applications in advanced membrane separations and biosensing.