About Owen McDougal, Ph.D.
Professor Owen McDougal is a natural products chemist with 25 years of experience, President of the Boise State Faculty Senate, former chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and director for the Food and Dairy Innovation Center.
He was recruited into the BUILD Dairy program in 2017 by co-founders Eric Bastian and Don McMahon to engage Boise State University as an academic partner in training students for careers in the dairy industry. Seeing the incredible potential to bring chemistry and other disciplines not generally engaged in dairy science research, like computer science, McDougal engaged fully in network activities, fostering strong partnerships with industry leaders. He leveraged this professional network, securing funds from the State of Idaho in 2021, to establish the Food and Dairy Innovation Center focused on addressing industry-priority projects through technical skill training for students in real-world projects of impact to food and dairy processors.
McDougal’s lab uses analytical instrumentation to extract, separate, quantitate, qualitate, and assess the structure and bioactivity of analytes from plant, food, and dairy sources. McDougal served as PI for an NSF Phase 1 Convergence Accelerator award in the food and nutrition security track, and he provides leadership for the Dairy NutriSols team.
The McDougal Research Group
The McDougal Group includes undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral researchers, as well as full-time technicians!
Research Topics
Food Chemistry
- Whey or milk dairy protein content evaluation by MIR, NIR, Kjeldahl, Leco, and LC-MS
- Evaluation of PEF treated whey for solubility and functionality assessment prior to and post-spray drying
- Reducing sugar, free amino acid, and acrylamide analysis from potatoes and potato blanch water by LC-TQMS to study the impact of exposure to PEF treatment or frying
- Quantitative determination of acrylamide content in fried potato products by LC-TQMS
- PEF treatment of barley for accelerated germination and energy conservation
- PEF treatment of grapes for improved wine quality
- Climate change studies on potatoes grown under a canopy of smoke and resultant potato products, using mass spectrometry-based metabolomics analysis
Funding Support
We acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator Track J Award #2345069
Food and Dairy Innovation Center
At the Food and Dairy Innovation Center; we envision a center that uses a transdisciplinary science, engineering, and a technology systems approach to drive innovation for the food industry!
Dairy Nutrisols
Dairy NutiSols is a Research and Innovation Consortium that provides sustainable process solutions for the production of nutrient-dense, shelf-stable, healthy products to combat food and nutrition insecurity. Our convergent science team creates AI-based chemometric software and facilitates industrial adoption of pulsed electric field and extruder technology to achieve 2050 climate goals and increase food production for a growing population.