By Anna Skinner
A 2004 Hamilton Southeastern graduate has moved on to bigger things. Recently, Tommy Kreke worked with a team from Purdue’s Laboratory of Renewable Resources Engineering to participate in the FDA Food Safety Challenge.
The reason behind the challenge was to decrease foodborne illnesses such as Salmonella.
In terms of the reasoning behind the research, Michael Ladisch, a professor and director of LORRE, said, “The challenge they now face is being able to test more samples more quickly, so that the time between when a food pathogen might be present and when it is detected would be shortened.”
Kreke graduated Purdue in 2009, and has been working on the project with as a LORRRE research staff member for two years.
“Purdue puts a strong emphasis on translating what we learn and discover into something that is beneficial to people and this challenge helped us in that goal,” Kreke said. “Participating in the challenge gave us access to industry mentors where we could learn more precisely what problems the food safety industry needs solved and helped us adjust our technology in response.”
Kreke and his team won the challenge, which resulted in $300,000 to further their research on testing food samples quicker.
Part of Kreke and his team’s research included enabling a “rapid filtration with actual food extracts rather than needing microorganisms to buffer,” according to Ladisch.
Currently, the team is looking toward developing their technology more so to meet standards.
A video about the technology the team developed is available at https://youtu.be/pdJSDPnmlfs.
“Winning the challenge was great in itself but has hopefully opened some doors to help us in our goal of getting our technology in a form that can be used in food safety laboratories and actually start preventing food borne illnesses that can cause a lot of suffering,” Kreke said.
