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Zachary Cartwright [00:00:00]:

I'm Zachary Cartwright. This is Water In Food. Today. My guest is Dr. Imran Ahmad, who is a research assistant professor at Florida International University, where he's part of the Food, Agriculture and Biotechnology Lab. His lab focuses on four core areas of food and beverage science, including studying product and process development for optimization of safety and quality, developing novel microorganisms for commercial applications, investigating sensory and consumer behavior in conformance with regulations. Dr. Ahmad has expertise in post harvest and food process engineering and is a lead instructor for produce safety and preventative control rules. Let's hear what Dr. Ahmad has to say on this episode of Water In Food. Hi, Dr. Ahmad. Thank you for coming onto the show. We appreciate you being here.

Imran Ahmad [00:00:48]:

Well, thank you for having me.

Zachary Cartwright [00:00:49]:

I understand that you are in the Food, Agriculture and Biotechnology Lab at Florida International University. What is this lab? What do you do there?

Imran Ahmad [00:00:58]:

Yeah. So Food, Agriculture and BioInnovation Lab, as we call it fab Lab for short, is a part of School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. Allow me to introduce you a little bit about school and university. The Chaplain School of Hospitality and Tourism Management is the 8th largest school of hospitality in the country. And on global ranking, we are number 33, I guess. FIU itself is the largest Hispanic serving institute. We have over 60,000 students. That's a lot of number, I guess. But unlike traditional land grant universities, where food science component is usually part of agricultural departments, agriculture studies, but here a number of different departments like dietetics, nutrition, agroecology itself, and then hospitality, they do sort of things that fall under food science. So we started almost seven years now to work in this space, partly because of demand from local industry, because in this metro area, there is no university or any lab that provides food science related services. So their research needs or product development needs. So that's how we started. And over a period of time with my other colleagues, because I focus more on food and post harvest, like fresh produce. And my colleagues, they work more in biotechnology. So when we put that together, so we came up with the name Food Agriculture and Biotechnology Innovation Lab. So that's how we started. Well, we'll do all sort of work that we'll be talking later on the show.

Zachary Cartwright [00:02:44]:

Sure. And I love that. It's called the fab lab. That's nice and easy to remember, and you talked about it just briefly there for a second. But how do you contribute to this lab? What is your research about?

Imran Ahmad [00:02:55]:

Well, I'm a food scientist by training, so anything related to food science in our school that comes to me. So I not an official title, but you can call me a lab director, I would say. So I would run the lab. I would make sure lab is in compliance with local laws or university food safety, and I would work on securing funds writing grants and developing business as well as and then signing off. Finally, we have a lab results. So I'll double check, cross check and validate the results, and then I will sign off the lab reports. That's part of the services we provide to the community. But then we also work in research itself. So, yeah, all our grants, our students that are working with us, everything comes out of this lab, and I oversee that.

Zachary Cartwright [00:04:00]:

And who are some of the other members of this lab and what types of things do they research?

Imran Ahmad [00:04:04]:

Yes. So mainly we rely on our students. So I would say I don't want to ignore them by saying that only the professors. No. So we heavily rely on our students, just not for the training, but also they work for their own thesis or research. So that's the main member. That's the bigger pool of our lab members. But my other colleagues, at least, we have two more permanent employees. Dr. Julia Lopez. She is food science PhD, and she works and contributes in her own area. Previously, we had another professor of microbiology who would work in, I would say genetic engineering of common food strains, yeast and bacterial strains. So his area is slightly different than mine, but we work together. We have another professor who is in gastronomy, and he would work more into culinary part of food science. And then there is another professor, Amir Kodamzade, who is agroecologist. We work together on post harvest and fresh produce aspects of food science.

Zachary Cartwright [00:05:19]:

Seems like a pretty well rounded group.

Imran Ahmad [00:05:24]:

We are a small group, but we cover different aspects of food science and food industry.

Zachary Cartwright [00:05:30]:

And I like how you point to your students and that's really nice that they can get involved and be a piece of this project. As exactly.

Imran Ahmad [00:05:37]:

I mean, I have one doctoral students who's working on tomatoes. Basically, that's a good example of collaboration. So he works with another professor, Amir Khudamzad. He is a horticulturist floriculturist by training. So the project is all about environmental stress on tomatoes. They have came up with a new type of manure fertilizer biofertilizer. So they are looking at how the final product, or I would say fresh tomatoes will be different from a regular cultivation practice. So we are helping them look into more in detail how bioactive compounds or polyphenols or color or other nutritive value is changed due to this new cultivation practice. So this is like win win situation for them. They produce on a farm level, and we evaluate their product for industry standards.

Zachary Cartwright [00:06:36]:

And tell us a little bit about yourself and your story. How did you become an expert in post harvest and food process engineering?

Imran Ahmad [00:06:43]:

Well, that's a long story. Like many other food scientists, I also am a graduate of Food Science. I was doing my masters after I finished my college, and I got another scholarship from Asian Institute of Technology. It's located in Bangkok, thailand is an engineering institute and is quite prestigious and hard to get in Thai. But during my halfway of my masters, I got a full scholarship from them and I said, okay, this opportunity should not be missed. So I moved there and that school was focused on post harvest and food process engineering. Little I knew at that time, but when I started after finishing my coursework, I was really sort of fell in love with process engineering and post Rs. So that's how I started. So food process engineering is slightly different from general food science. We learn more about heat transfer and drying and that brings me to water activity as well. But that's how I started to develop my own area of research. And later on I started to work in industry. And all along my professional career I was part of somehow food power development or any other aspect of food science. But I contributed from engineering perspective.

Zachary Cartwright [00:08:09]:

And what research projects are you working on now? What are you excited about that you're working towards?

Imran Ahmad [00:08:15]:

Well, you might have realized in our lab we work on different multitude of research. We have two, three different sources of reaching to a research topic that we would work on. So one is my own research that's just for the sake of publication as a professor, I'm required to produce good quality research paper. So yes, I have some of my own research projects. Then I have some projects from industry which are not really, I would not say at a cutting edge research, but those are really designed to cater the needs of those industries. Some of we have NDAs are really not going to talk about them, but then we have funded research project from Frederick grants. So right now we were working on non thermal processing. So I'm looking at high hydrostatic pressure HPP. So we are working on oat milk. The paper is ready to go. We are working with a company, high hydrostatic pressure company, who is, I mean, that's not really some secret research. It's like open. They want to share the results. So we are going to publish it soon. So we're looking at how hydroprostatic pressure affects oat milk extraction and organolaptic nutritive values. I'm also looking at high pressure on shrimp shelf life extension because once you apply very high pressure, it's not really good for muscle foods like I would say shrimp or any other even let's say chicken or meat because it make the muscle too soft and the consumer really don't like that texture. So we are looking at how we can really utilize high hydrostatic pressure. At the same time we can maintain the texture that consumer would like. So we have a number of different approaches. We have used sew wheat processing in combination with high pressure. We have used natural antimicrobials because FDR requires a five log reduction. And if we are reducing high hydrostatic pressure HPP, it may not kill microorganisms, so it will not pass FDA regulations. So we are looking at some other techniques that we can still achieve five log reduction. So these are a few projects that are in final stage and ready to go. I can actually talk a lot on this, but given the time, I would mention these two.

Zachary Cartwright [00:10:53]:

Yeah, it sounds like you're working on a lot of different projects. I wonder which of these do you use water activity measurements and how that is helping your research.

Imran Ahmad [00:11:03]:

Yeah, well, any product that requires water activity measurement, so we would measure other than research. Water activity is part of my regular teaching. In fact, you are a part of one of my class and thank you for doing that. So I have any new product development where we are looking at water activity to control or maintain the product stability? We will use water activity if you allow me to take it back. My introduction with outer activity was back in 20 years back. I didn't know, but other than my textbook, I didn't know much about water activity. I was working on a guava puree. It was a local product and had a lot of issues with stability. So we had an idea if we can use some specialty sugars in low quantity, low amounts, without changing, altering the flavor profile, can we increase the shelf life? So water activity was the main control measure for us. So that's how actually I started long back without having your sophisticated instrument. At that time, we had 16 while apparatus where each wild would have a different salt and we will calculate manually. And then it was a really laborous job. But that gave me a deeper insight how water activity works. I don't want to appear a boomer that in my time things were difficult, but honestly, it gave me an insight then how things are developed. And now we have great instrument that we can give us data in five to ten minutes.

Zachary Cartwright [00:12:48]:

And even now we can do it in as fast as 60 seconds. And I think a lot of people take it for granted how you can just get that reading very quickly and have it automatically stored in all of these other advantages, because water activity and isotherms used to take much longer than they do now.

Imran Ahmad [00:13:06]:

I tell you, Dr. Godwright, because being a professor, I want to teach students. So sometimes I give them the oldest model I have, which takes 20 minutes. So I want them to feel a.

Zachary Cartwright [00:13:16]:

Little bit yeah, of course, research needs.

Imran Ahmad [00:13:19]:

Patience, so you need to be very.

Zachary Cartwright [00:13:20]:

Patient when you're doing out of all of the research projects that you've done, is there a discovery or a certain research project that you're most proud of that you would like to share with us?

Imran Ahmad [00:13:32]:

Yeah, I definitely want to share. I mean, every PhD would want to talk their own PhD project. So I would take this opportunity to talk a little bit about it. It's not really directly related with water activity, but I use water activity as a measure as well. So when I was doing my PhD, since I like to work in fresh produce or perishables, so I was looking for some product that would give me results quickly. So me and my advisor came up with shrimps that said, shrimps goes back very quickly, so why don't we work on it so we don't have to wait for a very long time. So among biological materials, shrimps can go back in three to four days. So I actually redesigned fresh and frozen shrimp supply chain, and then I used machine learning and artificial intelligence models to predict the end quality based on how shrimp handled during the production and supply chain. So it was a little bit off of my expertise, but I got to learn something new. So we collected a lot of data, right from the farm level and then how it is handled, abused or misused during transportation. And then when it reaches United States, what is the final quality? Because sometimes they are refrozen and we really don't know, and it's being sold as fresh. Another issue we came across that the shrimps, usually there is a lot of illegal or malpractice in this supply chain. So we actually collected a lot of data, and then we fed all that data into our model and then predicted the final quality. So with not the frozen but the preserved stream, we also measured their water activity. But that was not the main measure. We had other aspects. So I'm quite proud of it. I wanted to continue that work because it gave us more insights into how we can use these modern tools of artificial intelligence, machine learning in food. Because food is a little bit technologically laid back as compared to pharmaceutical industry, auto industry, I would say chemical industry itself. So I think there are a lot of new developments that need to be implemented in food industry. So that's I'm a bit proud of. And in my free time, I'm always thinking about these things.

Zachary Cartwright [00:16:07]:

And I think it's a good point. Whatever you do in your grad research, you can never quite let go of, it becomes a piece of your story.

Imran Ahmad [00:16:15]:

Sometimes you really bore other people, but you have to be in the right company to talk about these.

Zachary Cartwright [00:16:21]:

Exactly. And you do get a lot of experience from whatever those projects are. You do carry that experience with you. So I appreciate that story. When I looked online and I look at your food analysis lab, I did notice that water activity is listed as one of your services. Now I'm just wondering what types of companies that you mainly get that you work with, if they're small companies or big and if there's certain product types.

Imran Ahmad [00:16:46]:

Yeah. So before I answer this question, I would want to introduce a little bit of our program, it's called Startup FIU. So, Startup FIU is a program that was started with the help of a number of different foundations. The whole idea was how we can help local community, especially low earning community, under 25,000 of annual income. They can qualify if they have a viable product idea. So we'll train them, teach them basics of business, how to budget something, the finance, business aspects. And then my role in that project is how we can help them technically, I mean their product development needs and then whether they are in compliance, food safety needs and then registering their product with the local FDAX, florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, you might have a different unit in your state. So we walk them through with that process. So basically I am the guy for the food product registration. So we give them these services for free because we help the community. Our cost is covered by the foundation. So if they are developing a product that falls under a category low moisture, let's say cookies become a lot of people are making cookies by the way. So water activity is our first go. And then I teach them. It's not that we just get sample and then we would give them a shelf life prediction. We would teach them how this instrument works, a bit of background, because everybody does not have that scientific background. Some are good professionals, they have jobs and they want to do this extra side business. So we actually teach them. Some are great, they learn it and they adopt it. They come book our lab and they collect their data. We help them to give them bit insights of the data. And then local food industry, they contact us for shelf life prediction. So we give them this service that's the main use of water activity. And then of course, we have some national brands. They are local, they have offices here for their R and D needs. They usually either they want to validate their data or they just want us to do create Isotherm comes curve for them. So yeah, these are the two, three different, I would say type of companies that are interested in this technology and we work with them.

Zachary Cartwright [00:19:29]:

And then one of my favorite questions for professors and something that I try to help people who are interested in graduate school is are you taking any new graduate students at this time?

Imran Ahmad [00:19:40]:

Well, I also want to introduce one of our program. Like I said earlier, we have school of hospitality. So we don't have a food science program. So a couple of years back we introduced a new program. It's an undergrad program. It's called Food Innovation and Entrepreneurship. So it's a four year degree, a standard hospitality degree. So, first two years they learn all those foundational courses. But in the last two years of their time at college, so they have this option to choose food Innovation and Entrepreneurship program. So what this program does, we teach them industry facing skills and then we do not have any prerequisite needed for this program so if you have a non Stem background you can still come and join the program. So there are four or five key courses and then they can pick foundational courses on chemistry or other relevant courses from anywhere. But we teach them product development, we teach them we call it Culinology because it's a culinary plus food science. So we merge them together, it's called culinology. Very few institutes in United States offer these courses, about four or five courses. And then we teach them food safety, we teach them food quality assurance. We also teach them some managerial skills, like entrepreneurship, what it requires to run a successful food business and then depending on their interest, they can go either core hospitality or they can land a job in food industry. I have a very good success stories where my students without having any formal food science education. They lend it a good job because nowadays industry look for other than the degree I'm not really undermining great schools and the full fledged food science degree I'm a food scientist myself. But industry really look for if you can do the job? If you're really well rounded in, you don't have only a lab acumen. You also have a business side of it. So some of my students with very informal working in my lab plus these courses, they landed a good job making more money than me, by the way. So we have this undergrad program and then on graduate level, some of students are already working with me. So we are always open if somebody want to work with us and provided we have some funds and if we have a project that has enough funds that we can put a student on. So we are always ready to adopt students. So if anybody wants to contact, please feel free to contact me and depending on the opportunity, we can work with them.

Zachary Cartwright [00:22:27]:

And I really appreciate you describing your program. I guess I didn't really realize that it is kind of different and that it has this business side to it. I of course see lots of different food science programs but this seems like a really exciting opportunity if somebody doesn't have that science background or if they want that entrepreneurship opportunity as well. So thank you for that info and my last question to you is just looking ahead if you could research anything, what would you like to be able to research?

Imran Ahmad [00:22:56]:

Yeah, really not because I'm talking to a water activity professional but I have been thinking from many months now that we can do something in this space. We generate a lot of data based on my expertise and the things I did in my PhD. I mean, I have developed this I'm not master of this data science but still I know the toolbox which I can use. So I wasn't thinking that we generate a lot of data on this moisture isotherm. We have relative humidity as a variable, temperature itself, moisture content, we measure all these things to develop an isotherm and there is a very good mathematical background. We have great equations available, empirical models, but still they have that boundary condition. They are not that robust to use thanks to your company meter group that you have at software. But if we really take everything into account, can we have more robust models that predict end life or shelf life based on type of product? Each product would have a different pattern of moisture removal. I would say I just want to use a simple language here. So if we can just feed that data into an artificial or machine learning environment, we might be able to predict more accurate models without using those equations. We can always use those equation as just to validate because those are gold standards now. But this will give us more robust type of model that can bit forgiven type. You can use any type of food products. In my lab we use this data for two reasons. Basically shelf life prediction based on moisture and of course the ingredient optimization. So these two engines can be development. This is very early stage, I don't have any idea, maybe it's not viable, people are already doing it. But I've been thinking about this one that we should come up with the more realistic goals and try to collect more data because that will require a lot a huge set of data. It will not be done with 510 20 data points. So we can collect data of different type of products and then put them together so the model itself can predict based on the type of product, like biological material or is it just a chemical product? So that I have been thinking, but I would definitely love to do, I don't know when, but maybe somebody can just pick this idea and do it. I'm really open to collaborate. It's not just some secret idea that.

Zachary Cartwright [00:25:45]:

I don't want to share with the.

Imran Ahmad [00:25:46]:

World, but I'm open to collaboration if anybody want to work on this.

Zachary Cartwright [00:25:50]:

And I think we're kind of headed in that direction, you know, here with AQUILAB we've started to form a really huge library of different products and start to separate that and I've noticed that a lot of products can be grouped and we can make a model to predict shelf life. And so I think like you just said, the more data collection, the more modeling and shelf life prediction that we do. Now, this is going to help us get to that point where we're going to be able to give R and D teams a lot of insights ahead of time on what their shelf life may be or what their packaging needs should be. And we've started that. But I'm really excited to see where.

Imran Ahmad [00:26:27]:

That can be integrated with a project management tool when they are planning their product. So at a very early stage, they know how their final product going to look like. I mean we have a number of tools one of your software as well that I use very frequently but if we have something more general tool so it will take a lot of R D and these iterations out that we usually have to do. No choice. But that's where the world is heading. And I think we should be thinking about that side.

Zachary Cartwright [00:27:01]:

Well, Dr. Ahmad, I just want to thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate you being a guest and we might have to touch base sometime in the future and see what research you're doing. I really appreciate you talking about your school and its program and how it's different from some of the other programs that we've highlighted. So thanks again so much for being on the show today.

Imran Ahmad [00:27:21]:

Sure. The pleasure is mine and I'm always available whenever we can we can touch base again. Thank you.

Zachary Cartwright [00:27:28]:

Yeah, thank you. Bye. I'm Zachary Cartwright. This is water and food. Find this podcast on Apple itunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.