Anandappa named founding director of food-safety alliance at NIC

Angela Anandappa has been named the founding director of the Alliance for Advanced Food Sanitation, based in the Food Innovation Center at Nebraska Innovation Campus.

Anandappa will lead the initiation and development of university-industry research projects and outreach programs to the food industry to promote better, more-efficient approaches to food sanitation based on sound scientific and engineering principles.

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln announced the alliance in October 2015 along with founding members Cargill, Hershey, Kellogg’s, Nestle, ConAgra Foods, Ecolab, Neogen and Commercial Food Sanitation. The work of the alliance includes identifying and evaluating new and improved materials fit for food manufacturing environments to better control pathogens and biofilms, identifying improved products and methods of cleaning, and improving the effectiveness and ecological friendliness of cleaning agents for all types of manufacturing processes.

“Sanitation is a critical part of keeping our food supply safe, from the fields, to the processing environments and transportation to retail and food service. The industry needs more efficiency in this area, and I look forward to leading the Alliance for Advanced Food Sanitation to develop better methods and propagate better practices,” Anandappa said. “The research we will be conducting will lead to an industry savings in time and operational costs, resulting in more affordable foods at the consumer level and consistently safer food products.”

Anandappa has worked in the biotechnology industry, food industry and academia. She has a bachelor of science in biology, master of science in food microbiology and doctorate in food safety from the University of Kentucky. Most recently, Anandappa led the supply chain safety group at Kraft Foods. Prior to that, she was the program coordinator at the Food Systems Innovation Center at the University of Kentucky.

In addition to her role with the alliance, Anandappa will be a research assistant professor with the Department of Food Science and Technology at UNL.