Career Tales from a "Plant-Based Scientist." The Lifetime Achievement Award Lecture for Phil Kerr.

It was with tremendous humility and gratitude that I recently learned I had been selected to receive the 2025 AOCS Protein & Co-Products Division’s Lifetime Achievement Award.  I appreciate the opportunity to use this lecture to share my perspective on the incredible events that have shaped our industry for the last three decades and the issues that I see looming for our community as we strive to continue on our mission to serve the unmet needs of the global population. 

                The ongoing need to nourish the planet’s population and to do it via technologies with optimal environmental and economic impact has created an environment where innovation was needed from all aspects of the scientific landscape.  As a result, the past three decades have seen the convergence of innovations from the chemical and physical sciences with those from the breadth of the biological sciences.  I will use a couple of them from my career path as examples of where traditional and advanced biotechnologies have combined with novel processing to address previously unmet needs for both livestock and human nutrition, noncommunicable disease mitigation, health, and wellness.  Positive career lessons in building cross functional teams will be shared in the context of AOCS’s Technical Division structure as a model for future successful commercialization of new innovations.  The road to positive impact has always been rocky and my life’s story would not be complete without sharing how these challenges have been frustrating but were also great lessons learned that I want to share with current and future collaborators in the AOCS community.