Education and Outreach
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Engineering and Food Science Camp
Day 1: Engineering and Food Science Camp at UM-Dearborn
~30 high school students from Plymouth-Canton Educational Park's STEM academy spent the day on UM-Dearborn's campus for our Engineering and Food Science Camp. After a seminar on engineering and food science, we split them into three groups of ten and rotated through labs in the ELB and IAVS, with UMD student leads guiding each tour. The students learned firsthand how engineering shows up in things they don't usually associate with it — food processing, smart manufacturing, and advanced driver assistance systems.
Day 2: Engineering and Food Science Camp at Michigan State University
~30 high school students from Plymouth-Canton Educational Park's STEM academy joined us for a field trip to Michigan State University on April 9th, 2026. The morning started at MSU's Food Processing Innovation Center, where the students saw the production-scale side of food engineering up close. After lunch on campus, we closed out at the MSU Dairy Shop with a look at how ice cream is actually made, plus a tasting (probably the most popular item on the agenda).
Workforce Development for Smart Food Processing
Smart Food Processing, driven by smart and digital technologies, is expected to revolutionize the food industry by making drastic improvement in yield, quality, and energy efficiency of many food processing operations. However, a widespread adoption of the smart food processing in industry will only be possible if accompanied by extensive training of the technical workforce in a new set of skills such as those for installation and maintenance of sensors and new control electronics, data collections and data management, and understanding of food processing operations.
To meet this demand, we are working with the Institute of Agricultural Technology (IAT) at Michigan State University (https://lnkd.in/gG9pekBB) to supplement their two-year certificate program in Food Processing, Technology and Safety with smart and digital technologies. More specifically, we’ve developed video lectures on Introduction to Smart Food Processing and Sensor Technologies. A separate video for a drying lab was developed to provide virtual experiences with sensors, drying process, and collection and analysis of process data. We are targeting to offer the developed modules to the IAT students in Spring of 2026. Our efforts to bring Smart Food Processing to practice via Workforce Development activities will continue.
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