Innovative Spirit Earns Rewards for Students, Prof
August 19, 2009 - Campus Bulletin
University of Guelph graduate students Brittany Huschka and Falguni Chauhan won first prize at a national competition promoting the use of pulse seeds in food recipes.
The pair of M.Sc. students in the Department of Food Science were awarded the grand prize of $2,500 for creating Smuffins, an Indian-inspired spicy gluten-free muffin.
Pulses are the edible seeds of legumes. The most common pulse crops are peas, beans, lentils, chickpeas and faba beans.
The event took place July 15 during the Canadian Special Crops Association Conference in Winnipeg. The competition featured teams of students from Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan showcasing creations such as chunky chocolate fudge probiotic ice cream and gluten-free crepes. The winners had already won $1,000 for their products during provincials, and their trip to the national competition was sponsored by BissmaPacific.
Marketing and consumer studies professor May Aung has been awarded a $10,000 teaching grant that will allow students to test the latest qualitative data analysis technology.
Aung is one of two researchers from across North America to receive the inaugural NVivo 8 grant from QSR International, a qualitative research software developer. Its NVivo 8 product allows users to upload and analyze video, audio, images and text side-by-side. Aung plans to incorporate the software into this fall’s research methods course for B.Comm. students.
Pamela Laughland, an M.Sc. graduate from the Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics, was co-winner of the Outstanding Master’s Thesis award presented by the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society (CAES). The prize was awarded at the CAES annual meeting this summer in Toronto and marks the second year in a row that a U of G grad has received the award.
Laughland, a 2008 grad who is now a research associate at the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, received the prize for her thesis titled “Innovation and Commercialization in the Canadian Bioproducts Industry.” Her co-advisers at U of G were Profs. John Cranfield and David Sparling. This summer, Sparling joined the faculty at Western as Ivey's new Chair of Agri-Food Innovation and Regulation.
