Career Start Award


Purpose of the Award

To provide a packaging researcher, who has not yet participated at a IAPRI Conference, with the incentive to be a first time research paper presenter and accelerate their knowledge and understanding of the IAPRI member resources by networking and interacting with a wide range of dedicated professionals working in all segments of packaging research, testing and education. This annual award is sponsored by Dr. S. Paul Singh.


Award 

One award of $1,000 US     

Eligibility

  • This award is open to any researcher from an IAPRI member who is accepted to present a paper at either an IAPRI World or Member Conference.
  • Applicants must currently be the primary researcher and paper author.
  • In addition, applicants must not have attended any previous IAPRI conferences, but may have participated in an IAPRI conference as a local volunteer.

Winner Selection 

The winner will be picked by a random drawing of the names from all eligible presenters at the conclusion of the abstract submission deadline.

Application: Career Start Award Application

2024 Award at the 24thIAPRI World Conference, hosted by ITENE, June 18-20, Valencia, Spain.

Katharina Miller is doing her PhD at KU Leuven in Ghent, Belgium under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Myriam Loeffler and in collaboration with her co-promoter Prof. Dr. Markus Schmid from the Albstadt-Sigmaringen University in Sigmaringen, Germany. At the conference, she presented the topic “Citric acid modified potato peel coatings can replace EVOH as an oxygen barrier”. Her presentation was a combination of various recent results of her research on “Barrier layers based on potato peels for packaging materials suitable for protein-rich foods”.
During her Bachelor studies in “Food, Nutrition and Hygiene” and her master studies in “Facility & Process Design” at the Albstadt-Sigmaringen University, she discovered her passion for the interesting topic on the valorization of side streams from the food processing industry for utilization in food packaging. After completing her PhD, she plans to stay in academia as a postdoctoral researcher.


 

2023 Award at the 31st IAPRI Member Conference - "Responsible Packaging for a Better Future", hosted by the SIES School of Packaging Technology Center, May 22-25, 2023 in Navi Mumbai, India. 

Seth Capizzi is an M.S. student at Virginia Tech under Dr. Laszlo Horvath. He is originally from Charlotte, North Carolina and completed his undergraduate degree at NC State in Sustainable Materials and Technology. His masters research investigates the effect vibration has on palletized unit loads that are transported using forklifts. This topic is very interesting to him because the effects of forklift vibration on pallets are not well understood, even though forklifts are very commonly used to transport pallets within warehouses and distribution centers.

While completing his degree he works as a Laboratory Technician in the Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design, where graduate students gain hands on experience conducting contract testing on pallets, unit loads, and packaging systems. He also takes many packaging related classes, his favorite being Advanced Packaging Dynamics. In this course taught by Dr. Laszlo Horvath, they learn everything surrounding shock and vibration data collection and analysis. Seth really appreciates the program for providing the students with the knowledge to succeed and the opportunity to gain valuable hands on experience in the field.



2022 Award at the 23rd IAPRI World Conference, "Packaging for World Crisis: Survivability and Sustainability", hosted by the Thai Packaging Center, June 12-16, Bangkok, Thailand

Thomas Goudsblom is a master student Industrial Design Engineering at the University of Twente, the Netherlands, with a great interest in packaging design, strategic design and future design. He presented his first paper ‘Future-driven packaging design: A foresight method to aid in designing solutions for future challenges’, written together with his co-authors Bjorn de Koeijer and Mauricy Alves da Motta-Filho.

During his studies he has been active in a variety of associations and committees at the University of Twente and abroad, focussing on improving the quality of education and the overall study experience at the university. One of these organizations is University Innovation Fellows Twente, founded by Stanford’s d. School, where his work concerned improving student wellbeing and increasing student participance in the matter at his university. At this moment he is close to starting his master graduation thesis and plans to graduate in the coming academic year.



Presented for the first time at the Twente symposium, the IAPRI Career Start Award (worth $1,000) went to a randomly selected young researcher attending their first IAPRI event. The lucky recipient this year was Mohsin Abbas of the University of Hasselt in Belgium, who delivered his ‘Study on the Oxygen Barrier Properties of PET via Ultrasonic Spray Coating of ZnO Nanoparticles’.
 
The generous funding for the IAPRI Career Start Award came from Dr. Paul Singh who presented the award