On 27^th August 2021, Dr. Haibo Huang, an associateprofessor in the Department of Food Science and Technology and affiliated withthe Department of Biological Systems Engineering at Virginia Tech, gave anacademic report entitled “Processing of Agricultural and Food Waste intoHigh-value Products.”

Dr. Huang’s research focuses on developing food and bioprocessingtechnologies to produce food ingredients and green chemicals from agriculturaland food products for improving the sustainability of the food supply chain.

Nearly 30% of food is being wasted globally, resulting in billionsof dollars of economic losses, including the food itself and associated water,energy, and chemicals spent in the food supply chain. In this presentation, Dr.Huang stated the current situation of food waste around the world. He talkedabout how processing technologies were applied to convert food wastes intohigh-value food ingredients and functional energy storage materials, with thepurpose of reducing food waste, recover resources, and promote sustainability. Themarket price of protein increases exponentially with the protein concentrationin the product. Dr. Huang set the brewer’s grains as examples to help studentsbetter understand the processing methods, illustrating that brewer’s grainscould be divided into high-protein products and high-fiber products to achievecomprehensive utilization.

In addition to scientific research, Dr. Huang also narrated his journalin the last eighteen years about study experience. He encouraged students to havea good command of basic knowledge and stay open-minded to speed up disciplineintegration.