CNS Food Scientist Eric Decker Wins Chevreul Medal : College of Natural Sciences : UMass Amherst

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Eric Decker, analysis professor of meals science within the College of Natural Sciences, has been honored with the Chevreul Medal, the very best honor in his subject of lipid meals chemistry.

The award, sponsored by the French Society for the Study of Lipids, was offered to Decker just lately on the EuroLipid Federation conferences in Leipzig, Germany.

Named in honor of Michel Eugène Chevreul, a pioneer in lipid and natural chemistry, the annual award acknowledges a French scientist and a scientist outdoors of France who’ve made important contributions to the event of data or industrial achievements within the subject of fat and oils.

Decker was honored for his analysis into free radical oxidation of lipids and mechanisms of antioxidants in quite a few meals techniques. He gave a plenary lecture on the EuroFed assembly on “Lipid Oxidation in the Lag Phase: The Key to Understanding Shelf-life.”

“Over the last 30 years, I have had the pleasure of doing collaborative research with many institutions across the world, including in European countries such as France, England, Italy, Denmark, Spain, and the Netherlands,” Decker says. “I am deeply touched to be honored by these colleagues through this very prestigious award, especially at a time when research on the stability of seed oils is so critical for food safety.”

Named among the many world’s most highly cited scientists in agriculture yearly since 2005, Decker retired final summer season after 32 years at UMass Amherst, together with 12 years as head of the meals science division. He will stay lively with a three-year appointment to finish his work. 

Over the years, he has served on committees of the FDA, Institute of Medicine, Institute of Food Technology, USDA, and American Heart Association.

His analysis goals to characterize mechanisms of lipid oxidation, antioxidant safety of meals, and the well being implications of bioactive lipids. These efforts deal with enhancing diet by incorporating extra secure, unsaturated fatty acids into meals whereas stopping oxidative rancidity that causes meals waste.

The Chevreul Medal is the newest of many high honors Decker has obtained lately. In 2024, the UMass Amherst Food Science Advisory Board really helpful the institution of the Eric Decker Food Science Scholar Fund, an endowment that names an Eric A. Decker Food Science Scholar, a five-year appointment to advance the analysis of main meals scientists at UMass Amherst. In 2022, he obtained the Nils Foss Excellence Prize, awarded by FOSS, a multinational meals tech firm primarily based in Denmark; and the International Association of Dietetic Nutrition and Safety Lifetime Achievement Award. He obtained two prestigious honors in 2021, the American Oil Chemists’ Society’s Supelco/Nicholas Pelick Research Award and the Institute of Food Technologist’s (IFT) Lifetime Achievement Award in Honor of French inventor Nicolas Appert.

Decker is the second UMass Amherst meals scientist to obtain the Chevreul Medal, which has been bestowed yearly since 1963. Wassef Nawar, a world-renowned lipid chemistry meals scientist who spend his total profession at UMass Amherst and died in 2023, gained the award in 1994.

This story was initially revealed by the UMass News Office.