10/28/2009

Global Food Concerns Focus of New Center for Innovation at Ohio State

Writer:

Martha Filipic
filipic.3@cfaes.osu.edu
614-292-9833

Source:

Ken Lee, Food Science and Technology
lee.133@osu.edu

Dr. Steve Clinton, The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center
steven.clinton@osumc.edu
614-293-2886

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The Ohio State University is investing $3.75 million over the next five years in a new food center that will address global issues in food supply, food policy, and nutrition and health.

The "Food Innovation Center: Foods for Global Security, Safety, and Health Promotion" will focus efforts around four themes: designing foods for health, ensuring food safety, advancing biomedical nutrition in disease prevention and health promotion, and examining global food strategy and policy, and involves more than 80 faculty members from 12 colleges.

They're taking on a tremendous challenge, said Ken Lee, professor of food science and technology and project director of the new center.

"Feeding the rapidly growing world population -- a projected 8 billion by 2025 -- will require a 40 percent increase in the world food supply," Lee said. "At the same time, we are wasting 40 percent of the current supply due to challenges in economics, safety, health, nutrition, security, technology, and food policy. But it's this kind of mission-oriented research that can tackle these issues. This center will allow faculty at Ohio State to do what we are uniquely good at, in a way that improves quality of life."

Dr. Steve Clinton, another principal investigator of the center and a professor of internal medicine, said the center capitalizes on Ohio State's strong and diverse academic programs.

"You can count on a few fingers the number of academic institutions that have colleges of agriculture, business, public health and veterinary medicine, integrated programs in human nutrition and food science, as well as a Comprehensive Cancer Center, on one single campus," said Clinton, who also leads the Molecular Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention program within The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center -- Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute. "The new Food Innovation Center is exactly the mechanism that can propel us to academic prominence in this field and contribute solutions to critical global challenges in food and nutrition."

The center is one of two new Centers for Innovation strategically funded by the university as a way to boost interdisciplinary efforts to improve the quality of the human condition. Funded jointly by the Office of Academic Affairs and Office of Research, each new center will receive $750,000 a year for a five-year period. It is expected that centers will become self-sufficient in five years.

Lee, who is also the director of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences' Center for Food Safety and Agrosecurity, recently met with Howard Goldstein, professor of human development and family science. Goldstein leads the only other new Center for Innovation, the OSU International Poverty Solutions Collaborative.

"There very well could be some synergies between the two centers," Lee said. "We're both interested in health and well-being, and food and poverty issues have similar challenges."

Lee envisions that the Centers for Innovation will make major contributions toward Ohio State becoming the "One University" -- not a separated set of programs and activities -- often described by President Gordon Gee.

"Having renowned food experts within walking distance of each other is a rare gift that this center allows us to build upon," Lee said. "Large-scale collaboration works when people value each other."

Besides the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences and the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center- Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, other entities involved in the Food Innovation Center are the College of Biological Sciences; the College of Education and Human Ecology; the College of Engineering; the Fisher College of Business; the John Glenn School of Public Affairs; The Michael E. Moritz College of Law; the College of Medicine; the College of Optometry; the College of Pharmacy; the College of Public Health; and the College of Veterinary Medicine.

More information on Ohio State's Centers for Innovation is available at http://research.osu.edu/innovation/.