Afroza Sultana, who is a third-year student of UGAS-EU, was presented with the Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology abd Agrochemistry Chushikoku Branch Award for students (2018) on January 24,2019. And She was also presented with the Society of Chemical Engineers, Japan Chugoku Shikoku Branch Excellence Student Award (2018) on March, 2019.
The JSBBA Chushikoku Branch Award is for students who offer the prospect of future achievements in the agrochemical field. The SCEJ Chugoku Shikoku Branch Excellent Student Award is for students who have achieved an outstanding academic record in chemistry classes, experiments, and research. Her efforts and achievements to date in the chemistry and agrochemistry fields are highly regarded.
Comment from Afroza Sultana
Hello! This is Afroza Sultana from Bangladesh. I completed my PhD under the guidance of Prof. Hidefumi Yoshii from Kagawa University in the Food Engineering Laboratory. My dissertation title was Microencapsulation of Flavors in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by Spray Drying and Characterization of Their Release Behavior.
The quality of food products and their consumption are directly related to flavor compounds. The application of flavor in food products with minimal losses is a major challenge in using food processors because flavor compounds are volatile and easily degrade. Microencapsulation prevents the loss of flavor by limiting degradation caused by heat, oxygen, or other adverse environmental factors. Encapsulation in yeast cells is a novel technique that reduces cost and reaps other nutritional benefits. My study focused on investigating the optimum conditions to obtain maximum encapsulation efficiency and analyzing the release characteristics of those compounds.
I have attended several conferences hosted by the JSBBA (The Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Agrochemistry) and SCEJ (The Society of Chemical Engineers, Japan) in the past three years and presented my research. I am pleased to receive the awards given by the societies based on the articles I presented at the conferences. Those awards will help to focus my enthusiasm to continue good research. I am grateful to my supervisor, Prof. Hidefumi Yoshii, for his guidance and support in conducting my research, and I am also thankful to the JSBBA and SCEJ for selecting me to receive the awards.
I would like to share a quote from Ella Fitzgerald: “Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong”