Rockville, Maryland, April 4, 2024 — Mary Kay Krogull, President of AOAC INTERNATIONAL, announced that Professor Michelle Colgrave is the recipient of the 2024 Harvey W. Wiley Award, the Association’s highest honor for lifetime scientific achievement.
Michelle Colgrave is a Professor of Food and Agricultural Proteomics, colloquially known as the ‘Professor of Beer,’ in the School of Science at Edith Cowan University in Australia. She also serves as the Deputy Director (Impact) at CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) Agriculture and Food, Australia’s national science agency based at the Queensland Bioscience Precinct in Brisbane, Australia.
Colgrave uses proteomics, the study of proteins with mass spectrometry (MS), to help identify key proteins that will benefit Australia’s food and agriculture industries and improve human health. Her research and scientific interest is in the proteomics of beer, specifically, gluten, which is contained in the barley used to make beer, a concern for people with celiac disease. She has a special focus on proteins involved in food intolerance and allergy as well as bioactive proteins that bring specific health benefits. Colgrave was the sole editor of the 2017 book “Proteomics in Food Science: From Farm to Fork,” which is aimed at introducing the application of MS and proteomics to the food science and agricultural research communities.
Adrien Rogers, Development Manager for Bio-Check, nominated Colgrave and stated that she is “recognized for major breakthroughs in the analysis of gluten, the proteinaceous elicitors of celiac disease” and “internationally renowned for the application of biomolecular analysis using MS to agricultural products.”
Krogull said that Colgrave’s work has “led to safer food sources for millions of people worldwide and exemplifies why she was chosen as AOAC’s Harvey W. Wiley Award winner.”
AOAC leadership will present Colgrave with the 2024 Wiley Award at the 2024 AOAC Annual Meeting & Exposition, from August 23 to 28, 2024, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Colgrave plans to speak on the topic of LC-MS with novel proteins at the Wiley Award Symposium. A profile of her by Richard A. Lovett, JD, PhD, was published in the January/February issue of AOAC’s Inside Laboratory Management.
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About AOAC INTERNATIONAL
Founded in 1884 with our beginnings in the USDA and US FDA, AOAC INTERNATIONAL is an independent, non-profit membership association of analytical science professionals in government, industry, and academia worldwide. Our mission is to advance food safety and product integrity through standards, validated test methods, and laboratory quality programs. We publish outcomes, including Official Methods of AnalysisSM, in the Journal of AOAC INTERNATIONAL and provide laboratory proficiency testing programs. AOAC also facilitates collaboration and training of scientists and other stakeholders to address challenges with sustainable analytical solutions.
