A new multidisciplinary collaboration from the Centre for Global Engineering (CGEN) is bringing together researchers from across the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering to address hunger and malnutrition, which affect billions of people around the world.
The Food & Nutrition Security Engineering Initiative (FaNSEI) seeks to leverage the Faculty’s diverse expertise to advance engineering solutions to these issues. According to Professor Yu-Ling Cheng (ChemE), director of CGEN, the fact that food and nutrition are complex and intertwined with issues like agricultural productivity, water availability, energy resources, food preservation, transport and storage make them ideal challenges for engineers to take on.
“Many of our professors already work in areas that are relevant across the entire value chain of food production, but may not have thought of themselves as being able to contribute to food-related challenges,” said Cheng. “This project is about connecting the dots between our faculty’s expertise and global problems.”
The group first met in October and has received seed funding from the Dean’s Strategic Fund, which supports strategic collaborations that have a broad impact in the Faculty. FaNSEI members include Professors Edgar Acosta (ChemE), Stewart Aitchison (ECE), Amy Bilton (MIE), Chi-Guhn Lee (MIE), Timothy Chan (MIE), Levente Diosady (ChemE), Elizabeth Edwards (ChemE), Emma Master (ChemE) and Arun Ramchandran (ChemE). The team has also sought input from U of T researchers outside engineering, including plant biologists and experts in food security and nutrition.
According to the World Health Organization, 800 million people around the world do not have enough to eat to be healthy. Even more — as many as 2 billion — suffer from deficiencies of key nutrients that lead to malnourishment.
While FaNSEI members are in the initial stages of their project, the team is gaining inspiration from existing projects with global impact led by its members.
