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Dr. Pranabendu Mitra

Program Director / Assistant Professor

Phone 715-232-5332
Office 301 Heritage Hall

Dr. Mitra is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Food and Nutrition. He is a Professional Engineer (P. Eng., APEGS, Canada). He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Agricultural Engineering in 2002, Master’s Degree in Food Technology in 2004 and PhD in Food Science and Technology in 2007. Prior to join to this university, he conducted over 8 years of postdoctoral research at McGill University (Canada), University of Saskatchewan (Canada), Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) and Cornell University (USA). During his study and postdoctoral research, he achieved a South Korean Government KRF (Korea Research Foundation) scholarship and a postdoctoral visiting fellowship under the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. He received a PEPSICO 50 Emerging /exceptional early career professionals award from New York Academy of Science and PEPSICO in 2016. He is a University of Wisconsin- Stout Discovery Center Research Fellow for 2019-2020.

Teaching interests: FN 123-Science of Food, FN 244-Farm to Fork, FN 350 /550-Unit Operations in Food Processing, FN 450 /650 -Food Engineering, FN 465/665-Food Product Development, FN 728- Introduction to Food and Nutritional Sciences Research, FN 729-Research Proposal for Food and Nutritional Sciences, FN 735- Problems in Food Science and Nutrition, FN 746-Food Innovations, FN 750-Food Packaging and FN 770-Thesis-Food Science and Nutrition.

Research Interests: Extrusion in food processing, food engineering/processing/bioprocessing, drying of agricultural materials, thermal/non-thermal food processing, food and non-food product development and extraction and isolation of bioactive compounds.

He brought a strong diversified research background related to bio-product processing, food engineering and food processing, drying of agricultural materials, extruded food processing, dairy and snack product development and supercritical carbon dioxide extraction and isolation of functional compounds from plant materials, algae based Microbial Fuel Cell and protein-based food and non-food product development.

 Professional Interests: He is a member of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT, USA), the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists in Saskatchewan (APEGS, Canada) and the International Association of Engineers (IAENG, Hong Kong). He is serving as editor for one journal, as editorial board member for 3 journals and as reviewer for almost all top ranked food science related journals. He served as external PhD thesis evaluator for foreign universities. He has been serving as member of Educational Activities Committee of University of Wisconsin-Stout since 2017.