Student Common Interest Group Lunch and Laugh Online

Attend this Midweek Mixer on July 21, 2021, at 12 noon CDT (Chicago, USA; UTC-5) to test your chemistry knowledge with a fun quiz and maybe you will win a prize! You will make new connections as you get to know one another through a food-based ice breaker activity and then there will be a little time left to learn about AOCS student awards. While we cannot provide a free lunch, we do guarantee we will add some laughter to your day. 

Hosts Ivana Penagos, Ghent University, and Ece Gulkirpik, University of Illinois, from the AOCS Student Common Interest Group look forward to spending time with you.

Register for free.

Meet the Hosts

Ivana Penagos is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Food Structure & Function Research Group at Ghent University (Belgium). Her research is centered on fundamental understanding of edible soft matter systems like emulsions, spreads and structured oils. She has a Master’s Degree in Food Science and Technology at Ghent University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Engineering at Universidad de los Andes (Colombia). Her research experience includes two R&D positions, one in the brewing industry at AB InBev’s global innovation center and one in the dairy industry at Alpina Productos Alimenticios SA. Additional research experience includes a research stay at Purdue University.

Ece Gulkirpik is a Ph.D. candidate in Food Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is working under the valuable guidance of Dr. Juan E. Andrade. She received her bachelor’s degree in Food Engineering from Istanbul Technical University in 2017. As an international student from a developing country, Ece’s aware of the need for a change in the current food system. She aims to combine her engineering background and interest in nutrition to create sustainable food systems to enable everyone to access safe and sufficient food. Her doctoral research focuses on developing and evaluating processing technologies to improve the utilization of soybean products and enhance the nutritional value of complementary foods in low-resource settings.