Welcome to the Food AI and Engineering Lab!
We are an interdisciplinary team developing biologically contextualized AI approaches to forecast microbial behavior in food and biosystems. Our work combines experimental microbiology and computational modeling to understand how environmental, microbial community, and process-level factors shape microbial dynamics.

Highlights
Apr 12, 2026
Congrats to Gillian on receiving the NSF GRFP award, one of the nation’s most prestigious STEM fellowships, for her work on biologically informed AI for food safety.
Jan 29, 2026
Dr. Yi received the College of Engineering Withrow Teaching Excellence Award.
Jul 27–30, 2025
A huge congratulations to the team at IAFP 2025!
- MeiLi won 1st Place in the Developing Scientist Awards Competition (technical), was a finalist in the 3-Minute Thesis Competition, and also presented a poster.
- Gillian won 1st Place in the Undergraduate Student Award Competition (poster).
So proud of the team's incredible work and presence at the conference!