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Food and Agriculture Career Event

Food and Agriculture Career Event

Thursday April 25, 4 to 6:30pm, AHG 2112

Join a panel of representatives from various USDA agencies and SDSU Career Services to learn more about exciting careers in food, agriculture, and natural resources.

Speakers

  • Giselle Childress, Officer In Charge, USDA-Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, San Diego.
  • Imena Ezell, Outreach, Recruitment, and Workforce Diversity Team, USDA- Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Regional Office
  • Josielyn Gauthier, Equal Employment Specialist with Region 5 and Pacific Southwest Research Station, USDA- Forest Service
  • Todd Skaggs, Supervisory Research Hydrologist, USDA Agricultural Research Service, Riverside, CA
  • Lorenzo Sianez Jr, Career Management Lead, SDSU Career Services

 

Protein Progress: Innovations at Scale

Protein Progress: Innovations at Scale

Monday April 22, 4 to 7:00pm, Student Union Theatre

Southern California Future Food Speaker Series

Speakers

  • Neal Bloom, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Interlock Capital
  • Tony Martens, Co-founder of Plantible Foods and Venture Partner at Unshackled Ventures 
  • Steven Matzke, Senior Manager of lnnov. Discovery and Business Development, Pioneering Innovation Group 

Agenda

Interlock Capital's Thesis on Alternative Protein and Healthy Food Initiatives 
Presented by Neal Bloom 

The Entrepreneurial Journey of Plantible Foods: Producing Rubi Protein™ at Scale 
Presented by Tony Martens 

R&D Partnerships for Fermentation-Enabled Alt Protein: A CP Kelco Case Study 
Presented by Steven Matzke 

Group Panel Discussion + Q&A 

Food + Networking 
3rd Floor Terrace 

 

EDUFAN Symposium

First Annual EDUFAN Symposium: Experimenting, Diversifying, and Understanding Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resources

April 12, 2024 from 9am to 4:30pm, SDSU Campus, Gold Auditorium at the BioScience Center

The current food system faces significant environmental and social challenges; it is a major contributor to climate change and biodiversity loss and fails to support global food security and dignified agrifood livelihoods. Regenerative agriculture aims to mitigate these conditions by actively restoring food and farming systems, using a holistic framework to continuously renew the land, improve the overall environment, and support agrifood economies, societies, and cultures. This system of farming principles and food practices focuses on the following areas to generate resilient systems:

  • soil fertility,
  • nutrient cycling, and health,
  • water quality,
  • biodiversity,
  • ecosystem health,
  • carbon sequestration,
  • social connections and political participation,
  • local economies.

The EDUFAN symposium bridges economic, social, and environmental sciences to identify sustainable and equitable solutions to food system and ecosystem challenges.

 

Healing Grounds

BFF Colloquium Series:  Healing Grounds - Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming

Featuring Liz Carlisle, Associate Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara

Friday, November 17, 2023, 3:30 p.m. in AL 101

Professor Carlisle will be sharing insights from her book, Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming. In Healing Grounds, she tells the stories of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian American farmers who are reviving their ancestors’ methods of growing food— techniques long suppressed by the industrial food system. These farmers are restoring native prairies, nurturing beneficial fungi, and enriching soil health. While feeding their communities and revitalizing cultural ties to land, they are steadily stitching ecosystems back together and repairing the natural carbon cycle. This, Carlisle shows, is the true regenerative agriculture – not merely a set of technical tricks for storing CO2 in the ground, but a holistic approach that values diversity in both plants and people.

Liz Carlisle is an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses on food and farming. Born and raised in Montana, she got hooked on agriculture while working as an aide to organic farmer and U.S. Senator Jon Tester, which led to a decade of research and writing collaborations with farmers in her home state. She has written three books about regenerative farming and agroecology: Lentil Underground (2015), Grain by Grain (2019, with co-author Bob Quinn), and most recently, Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming (2022). She is also a frequent contributor to both academic journals and popular media outlets, focusing on food and farm policy, incentivizing soil health practices, and supporting new entry farmers. She holds a Ph.D. in Geography, from UC Berkeley, and a B.A. in Folklore and Mythology, from Harvard University. Prior to her career as a writer and academic, she spent several years touring rural America as a country singer.
 
 

The Development of Algae as a Source of Alternative Protein

BFF Colloquium Series: The Development of Algae as a Source of Alternative Protein

Featuring Miller Tran, Founding Director of Triton Algae Innovation
Friday, October 27, 2023, 3:30 p.m. in AL 101

Dr. Miller Tran co-founded Triton, an algae biotechnology company, in April of 2013. Currently serving as Triton’s Vice President of Research and Development, he leads the pioneering efforts to transform microalgae into future food and sustainable ingredients.

Dr. Tran received his doctorate in Biology from the University of California, San Diego under the guidance of Dr. Stephen P. Mayfield. There he developed genetic tools and scale-up strategies that would facilitate the production of the next generation of bio-products. Dr. Tran has published 20 peer reviewed articles and has been granted dozens of patents worldwide.

 
 

USDA-funded Scholarships and High-Impact LearningInformation Session: USDA-funded Scholarships and High-Impact Learning

Wednesday, October 18, 2023, 12 p.m. in Music 245

Scholarships, travel grants, and more to support undergraduate and graduate students interested in food and agriculture.  Exciting educational opportunities coming to SDSU!

New Courses

Interdisciplinary team-taught courses:

  • CAL400: Transnational Approaches to Sustainable Food Futures
  • ENV S 496: Sustainable Agriculture

Paid Internships

  • Paid summer bi-national internships in San Diego, Baja California, and Oaxaca, Mexico with Professors Flores-Renteria, Love, Liu, and Perez)
  • Paid internships in San Diego or Imperial Valley with Profs. Biggs, Quandt, and Joassart

Research Experiences

  • Interdisciplinary research experiences in sustainable food and agriculture

Mentoring

  • Faculty and peer mentoring for undergraduate and graduate students in food-related disciplines

Questions/Application

 

Press Coverage for Our Research

BFF co-director Pascale Joassart-Marcelli discusses her research on the relationship between food, ethnicity, and gentrification in an interview with David Broncaccio on MaketPlace Morning Edition on National Public Radio MarketPlace.

BFF faculty Dr. Changqi Liu and Dr. Jing Zhao are recognized in an article in SDSU NewsCenter for their research in sustainable superfood. Read about “Galatic Guacomole.”

Coverage for Our USDA Grant

The Center received a $1 million USDA Grant to support sustainable food and agriculture training for Latinx students.  The grant is a partnership between SDSU and San Diego Mesa College and will provide career pathways to students from community college through graduate school.

Read the stories on CBS8 and SDSU NewsCenter.