Principal Investigators
COEPHT is currently administered by co-interim director and Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna. Both have many years of experience in teaching and research in food science and post harvest technology. The Center will have four lead scientists from the areas of functional foods and product development, food safety/toxicology, microbiology or biotechnology and food engineering/processing. Each lead scientist will have a team composed of a junior scientist, a post doc, a technician and graduate students.
Dr. Leonard L. Williams
Leonard L. Williams, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Food Microbiology and Biotechnology. Dr. Leonard Williams received his Ph.D. in Food Science and Technology specializing in Food Microbiology and Immunochemistry from Alabama A&M University. Prior to his arrival at The North Carolina Research Campus, he was an Associate Professor at Alabama A&M University in the Department of Food and Animal Sciences. Dr. Williams’s research will focus on developing rapid detection methods to identify and characterize food-borne pathogens, and understanding the role of bioactive components isolated from fruits and vegetables on the survival and virulence of food-borne pathogens using in vitro and in vivo animal and cell culture models.
Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna
Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna, Associate Professor of Food Science, joined North Carolina A&T State University in 2000 as an Assistant Professor of Food Science in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences. His research focuses on Product Development, with emphasis on functional foods and the development of value-added products from underutilized agricultural by-products. During his tenure at NC A&T, he served/serves as Principal Investigator or Co-PI in seventeen multidisciplinary projects totaling over $5 million. His research effort has resulted in 30 peer reviewed scientific publications, more than 120 abstracts/proceedings and the filing of several patent applications. He is also the co-editor of a book on Probiotics in Food Safety and Human health, published by CRC Press. Dr. Ahmedna is the recipient of the 2008 Thurgood Marshall distinguished faculty member award, the 2007 NC A&T Outstanding Senior Researcher Award, the 2005 USAID George Washington Carver Agricultural Excellence Award, the 2002 NC A&T SU Outstanding Young Investigator Award, and the 2001 Gamma Sigma Delta Award of Excellence in Research. He is a member of eight professional and four honorary societies. Dr. Ahmedna currently serves as the NC A&T State University campus coordinator for the North Carolina Agromedicine Institute, coordinator of the School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences “Agromedicine, Nutrition and Food Safety” program initiative, and as a member of the University Research Council. Prior to joining NC A&T, Dr. Ahmedna worked as a senior R&D scientist at Technology International Inc., LaPlace, LA; Research Associate in the Department of Food Science at Louisiana State University (LSU), Baton Rouge, LA; and statistical consultant in the Department of Experimental Statistics at LSU. During these tenures, he conducted extensive applied research and consulting in Food Science and Statistics. Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna holds a M.S. and Ph.D. in Food Science and a M.S. in Applied Statistics, all from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA.
Dr. Shengmin Sang
Dr. Shengmin Sang, associate professor specializing in functional foods, researches dietary exposure markers using metabolomic approaches, with the goal of identifying novel bioactive natural products that can be used in functional foods and dietary supplements to prevent chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes. Present areas of research focus on how post-harvest technologies affect the chemical profile, bioavailability and efficacy of the bioactive components in functional foods.
Specific projects in his lab involve:
- Purifying and identifying bioactive components from herbal medicine and functional foods;
- Standardization and quality control of herbal medicine and functional foods;
- Studying the bioavailability and biotransformation of bioactive food components in animals and humans;
- Studying the preventive effects of dietary polyphenols, such as tea catechins and apple polyphenols on the development of diabetic complications focusing on the trapping of reactive dicarbonyl compounds and the formation of Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs) using in vitro and animal models;
- Developing new chemopreventive agents from dietary sources, such as gingerols and shogaols from ginger, pterostilbene from blueberry, theaflavins from black tea, and wheat bran oil from wheat bran using in vitro and animal models.
- Using metabolomic approach to study dietary exposure markers.
He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in reputable journals, 15 book chapters and co-edited the book Herbs: Challenges in Chemistry and Biology. He holds two US patents. His research has been supported by grants from NIH Botanical Center, NCI/NIH, U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Apple Association (USApple) and the Apple Products Research Education Council (APREC), as well as by a private company. He won the 2007 Young Scientist Award of the Agricultural and Food Chemistry Division from the American Chemical Society, and the 2009 Matthew Suffness Young Investigator Award, which is currently the highest honor for an investigator in the first ten years of his independent research career in the American Society of Pharmacognosy. Shen obtained his Ph.D. degree as a natural product chemist from Shanghai Institute of Material Medicine, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1999. From 1999 - 2003, he served as a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Food Science at Rutgers University, and from 2003 - 2008 as an assistant research professor in the Department of Chemical Biology, School of Pharmacy. From 2008 - 2010, he was assistant professor in the Julius L. Chambers Biomedical/Biotechnology Research Institute at North Carolina Central University. He continues to serve as adjunct faculty in the Department of Chemical Biology, School of Pharmacy at Rutgers University and in the Department of Food, Bioprocessing and Nutritional Sciences at North Carolina State University.
Dr. Guibing Chen
Dr. Guibing Chen, assistant professor and lead scientist for food processing and engineering, is currently researching functional extruded foods, functional food processing using novel microgel capsules, and active and modified atmosphere packaging of fresh produce. Prior to joining NC A&T State University's Center for Excellence in Post-Harvest Technologies, he was a thermal process engineer at ConAgra Foods, working on retort sterilization of canned foods. His previous research involved various aspects of food processing, including mathematical and computer-aided modeling, rheological behavior of semi-solid foods, corn drying, microbial inactivation dynamics, thermal processing of canned foods, food extrusion, and novel gel capsule development. Chen was the first researcher to develop a control strategy for automatically correcting process temperature deviations in continuous retort sterilization process. This work was awarded the first place in 2006 Charles R. Stumbo Student Paper Competition, organized by the Institute for Thermal Processing Specialists. His research has been published in prestigious food journals, including the Journal of Food Engineering, Food Research International, and the Journal of Cereal Science. Chen earned his Ph.D. degree in Agricultural and Biological Engineering specializing in Food Processing from Purdue University. He also received M.S. and B.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Dalian University of Technology, China. Following his Ph.D. studies, he conducted postdoctoral research at the same University.