Please join us for our Reunions Weekend panel, Princeton Entrepreneurs: Designing the Future for Food, on Friday, May 27, from 10:30 to noon, in Frist Campus Center 302.

The panel – free & open to the public – will be moderated by Tim Searchinger, co-founder of Princeton Studies Food. Gordon Douglas MD ‘55 and co-founder, Princeton Studies Food, will introduce the panel and the panelists and briefly discuss the work of our council.

The panel will be organized around panelists’ actions that are connected to recommendations in Searchinger’s latest World Resources Institute report, “Shifting Diets for a More Sustainable Food Future.”

Click here for more information about Reunions 2016.

Here’s our updated Future for Food panel biographies:

Timothy Searchinger, Princeton Studies Food co-founder, is a research scholar in the Woodrow Wilson School STEP program and a lecturer in the Princeton Environmental Institute. His work combines ecology, agronomy and economics to explore ways of meeting global food needs while reducing climate change and impacts on ecosystems. His academic work is best known for papers exploring the land use and greenhouse gas emissions of bioenergy. He is a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, for which he serves as technical director of “Creating a Sustainable Food Future: A Menu of Solutions to Sustainably Feed More than 9 Billion People by 2050.” Reach him at tsearchi@princeton.edu

Gordon Douglas MD ’55, Princeton Studies Food co-founder, is Professor Emeritus of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and is director of three biotech companies: Vical, Inc. Novadigm, and Protein Sciences. He was president of the Merck Vaccine Division, responsible for the research, development, manufacturing and marketing of Merck’s vaccine products, from 1989 until 1999. Previously, he was an infectious disease specialist with research interests in respiratory viral infections, vaccines, and antivirals at Weill Cornell Medical College and the University of Rochester School of Medicine. MD, Cornell University Medical College; National Academy of Medicine. Reach him at rgdouglasjr@gmail.com

David Benzaquen is the founder and CEO of PlantBased Solutions, a mission-driven, marketing and management consulting agency for plant-based consumer packaged product companies. In addition to helping launch and grow plant-based brands, PlantBased Solutions manages a syndicate of angel and venture capital investors interested in plant-based business opportunities. David is an advisor at various food incubators and accelerators, including The Brooklyn FoodWorks and Food-X. He is a contributing writer to the New Food Economy and New Hope Natural Media’s IdeaXchange. Bachelor’s, American University; Master’s, The New School. Reach him at david@plantbasedsolutions.com

Reuwai Mount Hanewald ’94, her parents, Pam and Gary Mount (’66) and sister, Tannwen Mount (’98) own and operate Terhune Orchards, where they grow 40 types of fruits and vegetables on 200 acres in Princeton. The farm also includes a bakery, vineyard and winery, greenhouses, pick your own, barn yard, and farm market. Terhune Orchards receives 700,000 visitors a year and is known for its organic and innovative farming and successful marketing practices. She recently returned to the farm full time after 20 years as a science department chair and secondary school teacher at schools in the United States, Central America and West Africa. Reach her at reuwai@gmail.com

Alexander Lorestani ’15 is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gelzen. Gelzen is a synthetic biology company that engineers and manufactures proteins for use in food and cosmetic products. Prior to his work at Gelzen, Alexander was an MD/PhD candidate at the Rutgers University-Princeton University Physician-Scientist Training Program. He studied medicine at Rutgers University and microbiology at Princeton University. Alexander’s focus was on infectious diseases, specifically antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Before becoming an MD/PhD candidate, Alex studied cell biology as an undergraduate at Boston College. Alex has a passion for translating discoveries forged through high-quality basic research into tools that can be used to improve the lives of others. Reach him at alex@gelzen.com

Shana Weber is founding director of Princeton’s Office of Sustainability, which opened its doors in 2006. She comes to the sustainability field with a background in ecology, climate science research, teaching and communications. Current research interests periodically take her to the mountains of the American West, but the bulk of her work focuses on helping Princeton University become an exemplar of sustainable practices, campus-as-lab research, and education. Weber also serves as President of the NJ Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability, and administrative sponsor for the NE Campus Sustainability Consortium. Reach her at shanaw@Princeton.EDU

Below are links to the complete videos of the Food Entrepreneurship symposium of Feb 19, 2016.See the agenda here and the panelist biographies here.

Innovation in Agriculture: http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/qb9zh

Innovation on the Plate:  http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/zhnrw

Innovation in Food Literacy: http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/jt8wl

Innovation in Finance: http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/nmprk

Future of Food Study: http://www.kaltura.com/tiny/nig6s

Tim Searchinger

“Creating a Sustainable Food Future (installment 11) shows that for people who consume high amounts of meat and dairy, shifting to diets with a greater share of plant-based foods could significantly reduce agriculture’s pressure on the environment.” Read more at the WRI and download the PDF from the link below. Thanks to author Timothy Searchinger, research scholar, Woodrow Wilson School and the Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy and lecturer for Princeton Environmental Institute and World Resources Institute fellow. Don’t miss the Protein Scorecard, which ranks foods from lowest (plant-based foods) to highest impact (beef), as well as the Shift Wheel, which harnesses proven marketing and behavior change strategies to help move billions of people to more sustainable diets. http://www.wri.org/publication/shifting-diets

Please join students of FRS 138: Science, Society & Dinner for a salt tasting and talk about food systems study at the Princeton University Farmers’ Market on Wednesday, April 20, from 12:30 to 1:30.

Market-goers will sample Bobolink Dairy & Bakehouse grass-fed butter slathered atop slices of the Rustic Loaf, with two to three varieties of salt from Savory Spice Shop in downtown Princeton.

Students will be available to discuss their experience of the class, now in its first semester as a Freshman Seminar.

Students also will have readings available for perusal from the course list, many of which are on the shelf at Labyrinth Bookstore, or online there, including Kitchen Literacy, Just Food, and On Food and Cooking. Not on the reading list, but germane: Salt: A World History.

Lyndon Estes, right, along with Chef Craig Shelton from FRS 138: Science, Society & Dinner.

Lyndon Estes, ecologist, associate research scholar and lecturer, writes to invite all to postdoc Janice Lee’s talk, “Junking Tropical Forests for Junk Foods?” at the agricultural group meeting he chairs on Wednesday, April 13, at 10 am in EQuad E322.

Lee is a member of Professor David Wilcove’s research team. Here’s information about her from the Wilcove page:

“My research interests span the fields of Conservation Biology, Land Use Change, and Agriculture. Much of my work focuses on the social and ecological consequences of human impacts on the environment especially within Southeast Asia. After having worked on a range of topics in conservation (wildlife trade, invertebrate ecology, habitat fragmentation), I now focus on the conservation and development challenges faced in the context of commercial and small-scale agricultural expansion in the rural tropics. I am deeply interested in the linkages and feedbacks among socio-political, economic and ecological systems, and apply a combination of socioeconomic techniques, geospatial analysis, and simulation modeling in my research to investigate socio-ecological systems.”