Jean-Pierre Emond, Ph.D.

Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering

Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences

2009 Awardee

Jean-Pierre Emond is a professor in the Packaging Science program of the Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE) department. His research includes areas such as packaging, cold chain management, and tracking technologies and transportation modes, which are essential to ensure the quality and safety of food and pharmaceutical products. In the last five years, Emond has secured more than $8.5M in research which has funded 16 graduate students, six of them at the Ph.D. level. In the last five years, Emond has published 23 articles and book chapters. He also has been an invited speaker at more than 30 events locally, nationally and internationally.

Currently, Emond is the Principal Scientific Advisor for the International Cool Chain Association (CCA) and International Air Transport Association (IATA), an organization including 97% of all airlines. He is also the Principal Scientific Supervisor for the Canadian government and Food Mail, a program that provides the transportation of nutritious food to 70,000 people who live in 80 communities across the Northern and Arctic regions of Canada.

As the Founder and Director of the Food and Pharmaceutical Products RFID Laboratory, Emond supervises more than 18 projects, which deal with the tracking of foods being shipped to retail stores to monitoring temperatures of pharmaceutical products via satellites. He is a founding member of the Global RF Lab Alliance (GRFLA), which collaborates with the top 10 RFID labs in US, Europe and Asia. He is also a founding member of the editing board for the International Journal of RF Technologies: Research and Applications. Currently, he is leading the RFID sector of a $4.1M project with the US Department of Defense for monitoring the supply chain of military rations using RFID.

Among Emond’s other accomplishments is co-founding the University of Florida/IFAS Center for Food Distribution and Retailing (CFDR). The CFDR provides the food industry and the scientific community with a unique environment for developing knowledge that will assure food quality and safety throughout the entire distribution chain. Emond hosts the University of Florida Academic Pharmaceutical Cold Chain Conference each year. This conference brings together the top 20 pharmaceutical companies to learn the newest breakthroughs in cold chain management.