March 4, 2004
Larry Johnson, Iowa State University professor of food science and human nutrition and director of the Center for Crops Utilization Research, has been elected president of the American Oil Chemists’ Society.
The society is an international organization consisting of more than 5,400 members from 108 countries who work with fats and oils and other related materials used for both edible and non-edible purposes. It was founded in 1909 and is headquartered in Champaign, Ill.
Johnson joined the Iowa State faculty in 1985. He earned a doctorate in food science from Kansas State University in 1978.
As director of the Center for Crops Utilization Research, Johnson is responsible for programs involving 46 affiliated faculty focused on developing new uses for corn and soybean. He also conducts research into corn wet milling; new ways of separating grain into ingredients; vegetable oil and soybean processing; and the chemistry of lipids, starches and proteins.
The Center for Crops Utilization Research is a research center in the Plant Sciences Institute and the Colleges of Agriculture and Family and Consumer Sciences.