2015 World Agriculture Prize Awarded to Professor Emeritus R Paul Singh of UC Davis

At the opening ceremony of the GCHERA Conference 2015 at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, Lebanon it was announced that the GCHERA World Agriculture Prize 2015 will be awarded to Professor R Paul Singh, world-renowned food scientist and agricultural engineer.  The award is in recognition of Singh’s remarkable lifetime internationally renowned contributions to food engineering research, education, development, consulting and technology transfer.

John Kennelly, President of GCHERA, in announcing the award, praised Professor Singh as a most worthy recipient of the World Agriculture Prize based on his outstanding contributions to education, research and innovation in food science engineering in a career spanning more than 40 years. “This recognition is an example to others, and is particularly timely as we face the challenge of ensuring food and nutritional security for our rapidly growing world population.”

Professor Singh has effectively converted substantial research results from his laboratory to industrial practice. His studies on food freezing led to the development of computer software that is now used by operators of industrial freezers for improving energy efficiency. The software is distributed worldwide by the World Food Logistics Organization. His research on heat transfer during frying led to the improved design and operation of grills and fryers used by restaurants and food service operators. His fundamental studies on airflow in complex systems helped design innovative systems for rapid cooling of strawberries. Furthermore, his research studies for the Department of Defence on improved biosensors provided the much-needed data for improving food inventory management and shelf life of perishable foods.

Professor Singh is a world leader in food engineering education, having helped establish and evaluate food engineering programs at institutions in Brazil, Chile, China, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Singapore, Thailand and the USA. He helped establish the Escola Superior Biotecnologia, Oporto, Portugal, and served as the founding member of its Scientific Board.  His joint authored textbook Introduction to Food Engineering, 5th Edition (Elsevier Publishers) is the standard for food science and technology curricula throughout the world and is now available in five languages (Spanish, Russian, Korean, Chinese, Turkish).

Professor Singh pioneered the use of the Internet in teaching food science with a seminal paper published in 1996 in Food Technology.  He remains at the forefront of those developing web-based course materials in food science engineering. As of March 2015 his 115 video tutorials have been viewed 109,900 times by individuals from 184 countries.  More importantly in the past year the tutorials have been watched for more than 6000 hours.

Linda P B Katehi, Chancellor of University of California Davis, welcomed the award recognising Singh’s distinguished career.  “For over four decades, Prof. Singh’s work as a pioneer in food engineering has been improving lives the world over, this prestigious, and well-deserved, honour is a testament to the importance of his research, and UC Davis is tremendously honoured to call him a member of our faculty.”

The GCHERA World Agricultural Prize Award Ceremony will take place at Nanjing Agricultural University, China on 20 September 2015 and will be followed by the International Seminar and World Dialogue on Education and Innovation in Agriculture and Life Sciences, “Global leadership to meet the challenges of 21C” on 20-21September.

Dr Paul Singh is a Fellow of the International Academy of Food Science and Technology, a co-chair of the IUFoST  International Coordination Panel on Food Engineering and developer of the IUFoST Distance Assisted Learning modules related to Shelf Life of Foods.