Silvana Martini Awarded College of Ag Faculty Researcher of the Year

Silvana has amassed a most impressive record of research productivity and achievement during her four and a half years at USU.

The central focus of Silvana's research program is to understand mechanisms involved with lipid crystallization and how these processes can be controlled to improve food quality and nutrition. This unique area of research has great potential al1d importance to the food industry. For example, Silvana is looking at how ultrasonic processing effects crystallization of unsaturated fats so to mimic characteristics observed with saturated fats. This is an unexplored area that will be key to developing alternative processing strategies for production of healthy food products with good physiochemical and sensory characteristics.

As a doctoral student and post doctoral associate she published frequently before coming to USU including 18 refereed papers, one book chapter and 21 presentations at scientific meetings. She has built on that record since arriving at USU. Her remarkable intellectual and research productivity at USU includes 15 refereed articles in very good journals, four invited book chapters (plus two other submitted), a provisional patent, and 27 presentations.

Silvana has received over $1.8 million in research funding since becoming a faculty member. Most of that funding was through nationally competitive mechanisms and this confirms her ability to compete for extramural funding on a national scale. On those grants where Silvana was co-PI, she had well defined roles that were key to the success of the overall projects. On those grants where Silvana was PI, she both contributed her individual scientific expertise and demonstrated an ability to motivate, organize and coordinate interdisciplinary teams of researchers.