Future Food Thickeners
Project Overview
About
Consumers increasingly prefer recognisable, plant-based ingredients, but ordinary starches often cannot match the performance of commonly used food thickeners. Future Food Thickeners modifies starch particles so positive and negative areas attract and assemble in liquids, increasing viscosity without relying solely on heating. Two prototypes use charged particles and hollow, porous structures to increase viscosity by up to 20 times and create textures that recover after stirring or processing. Designed for industrial production, they could support affordable foods made with simpler, more familiar ingredients.
Team
Zoe Atkins
Zoe Sullivan Atkins is a PhD candidate at Cornell University, graduating in May of 2027, studying novel and natural food ingredients with Professor Alireza Abbaspourrad. She earned her BS in food science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was a research assistant in Professor Richard Hartel's ice cream and candy research lab. Zoe spends much of her time outside of lab hiking or reading with her fiancé, Rogelio Cianchini, and their two dogs: Mishka and Sheridan. She is passionate about making positive change through food.
Peilong Li
Dr. Peilong Li is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Food Science at Cornell University. He received a B.S. from Hong Kong Baptist University and an M.S. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He completed his Ph.D. at Cornell University in 2023. He works with the food industry to explore strategies for developing healthy and palatable future foods. His research focuses on understanding the structure–function relationships of carbohydrate polymers, and investigates how processing shapes the properties of food materials.