The Industrial Oil Products Division Student Excellence Award recognizes graduate students presenting an outstanding oral or poster presentation within the Industrial Oil Products technical program at the AOCS Annual Meeting.
What does the recipient receive?
- Certificate
- Complimentary AOCS Annual Meeting Registration
- Up to US $500 travel allowance
- Complimentary Industrial Oil Products Division meal ticket
- Opportunity to present an award lecture at the AOCS Annual Meeting
Who is eligible?
Graduate students presenting within the Industrial Oil Products Division technical program at the AOCS Annual Meeting who have never received the Industrial Oil Products Division Student Award
How do I nominate someone?
Login to the Awards Portal to submit the following application materials.
- Complete application questions using the Awards Portal
- Letter of support from the student’s academic advisor
- At least one other letter of support from anyone familiar with the student’s academic endeavors
- University transcripts
- Detailed Curriculum Vitae
- Abstract submitted for the current year’s AOCS Annual Meeting & Expo
Most Recent Recipient
Arda Tuhanioglu is a Ph.D. student at the University of Arkansas in the Department of Food Science, working with Dr. Ali Ubeyitogullari in the Food Engineering for Health Lab. The focus of his Ph.D. study revolves around the limitations of grain sorghum utilization in foods and applications of supercritical carbon dioxide technology as a green and sustainable food processing technology. He received his bachelor's degree in food engineering from Istanbul Technical University in 2017. As an undergraduate student, he served as the student representative of the Istanbul Technical University UCTEA Chamber of Food Engineers (i.e., similar to the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE)) from 2015 to 2016. He also did two summer internships in large-scale milk and cocoa processing facilities as a production, laboratory, and quality assurance intern in 2016 and 2017. He received his master's degree in food engineering from Middle East Technical University in 2021.
During his master’s studies, he worked on bioprocessing technologies (single-cell oil production using various oleaginous yeasts), which involve multidisciplinary areas such as process control and optimization, microbiology, food chemistry, and non-thermal novel food processing, such as high hydrostatic pressure (HHP). Currently, as a senior graduate assistant, he is pursuing a minor in statistics and mentoring undergraduate students, who are performing their honors projects in the same lab, working on agricultural waste valorization, 3D food printing, functional ingredients, and supercritical carbon dioxide technology. In addition, he is very involved with student recruitment and retention; he provides demonstrations of 3D chocolate printing as a way to connect with middle/high school students. He is also serving as a teaching assistant in Dr. Ubeyitogullari's The Science of Chocolate class at the University of Arkansas.