The Future of Food is Fungal: Harnessing Fungi for Novel Sweetener Development & Grape Pomace Valorization

Monday, July 6, 7:30 p.m.

Zoom link will go to members via email.

Fungi play a crucial role in the rapidly growing food and agriculture sector of biotechnology. From fermentations to developing and expressing novel protein-based sweeteners, and the valorization of grape pomace, fungi are a key part of building a circular bioeconomy and exciting food innovations.

Matt Smardz, a Ph.D. candidate in the Gibney lab at Cornell University, is dedicated to developing fungal systems for food and agriculture biotechnology. He earned his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Canisius University in Buffalo, New York. After a brief stint as a patent examiner at the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Matt returned to academia and worked in Dr. Patricia Diaz’s lab at the University at Buffalo School of Dental Medicine, where he studied bacterial interactions in the oral microbiome before beginning his Ph.D. program at Cornell.