Current interests focus primarily on developing and integrating cutting-edge scientific findings based on biotechnology into transferable products for applications in the fields of food safety and human health. Students here work on developing innovative and rapid analytical techniques for ensuring food safety and human health by employing their diverse backgrounds in analytical chemistry, molecular biology, biophysics, engineering, and advanced mathematics.

With the development of science and technology and the interpretation of food chemical substances and biological functions by food researchers, consumers' awareness of food functions has improved from satiety and nutrition to health. Facts have proved that most of the acute and chronic diseases of human beings are related to food, and epidemiological studies have confirmed that a long-term unhealthy diet causes many chronic human diseases. Therefore, understanding the health-promoting effects of bioactive ingredients in food is of great significance for preventing chronic diseases and improving the quality of life. Our research team uses molecular biology, cell biology, and analytical chemistry technologies to study the interaction of chemical food components with biochemical molecules in the body and gut microbiota and further explore the prevention and treatment mechanisms of food bioactive components on chronic diseases...

Our research cuts across discoveries in nutritional science through translation into evidence-based knowledge and practice for health promotion and intervention. We are interested in studying an individual’s response to nutrition and propensity to inflammation- and obesity-associated diseases. We examine dietary and nutrition screening mechanisms, mechanisms of actions of foods on appetite and food intake, energy balance and weight control, macronutrient metabolism, and links between diet and susceptibility to chronic diseases and exercise performance.

Food processing is transforming agricultural products into food or one form of food into other forms. Our research incorporated a broad knowledge of processing technology with the necessary background understanding of unit operations, food engineering, manufacturing systems, preservation techniques, equipment, product design, food chemistry, process control, food microbiology, food packaging, and food legislation applicable to the food processing industry to produce high-quality food products. Food quality represents the sum of all properties and assessable attributes of a food item. Usually, this is done by the three accepted categories of quality: sensoric value, suitability value, and health value. Our research also aims to use flavor chemistry to figure out dynamic changes and formation mechanisms of food flavor during food processing to help food quality control...

Personalized medicine is a multi-faceted approach to patient care that not only improves our ability to diagnose and treat disease but offers the potential to detect disease at an earlier stage when it is easier to treat effectively. With chemical synthesis and micro-nano processing technology, novel biomedical materials are developed for targeted drug delivery to achieve customized therapy for chronic diseases (e.g., diabetes) and cancer.