UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In early November, Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences and the College of Engineering partnered to host a BUILD Night at the Penn State Learning Factory. Attendees worked in teams to map challenges, brainstorm solutions and build prototypes to combat food insecurity by reducing post-harvest waste.
“We have excellent collaborators in the College of Engineering,” said Maria Spencer, John and Patty Warehime entrepreneur in residence and assistant clinical professor. “The intersection of agriculture and engineering is where innovation accelerates. Together, our colleges provide innovators with integrated skills, networks and facilities needed to transform ideas into scalable solutions. This partnership is multiplicative, not just additive, and we are excited to be working together toward a shared goal of global food security.”
Spencer leads the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Global Youth Action Initiative World Food Forum Youth Food Lab at Penn State, which supports youth innovators working toward food security and climate resilience.
The Learning Factory is the maker space for Penn State’s College of Engineering, designed for students to learn by doing. BUILD Night included training in design thinking and an opportunity for students to begin creating simple prototypes to address post-harvest food loss.
Aliaa Maar, maker spaces and BUILD Night coordinator, helped host the event. Bethany Parkinson, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering, volunteered her time to deliver the Design Thinking seminar.
Melanie Miller Foster, associate teaching professor of international agriculture and co-founder of the Global Teach Ag Network, brought students from Penn State’s Youth Food Lab academic delegation to BUILD Night.
“This semester, the delegation worked on a project on food waste and presented a video about their work at the World Food Forum in Rome,” said Miller Foster. “It was a natural fit to attend the BUILD Night, not only because of the topical area but also to support the Youth Food Lab.”
Miller Foster noted that attending BUILD Night allowed delegates to see firsthand how interdisciplinary solutions are key to solving food-waste challenges.
“Being in the makerspace and learning how engineers engage in design thinking was a great demonstration of how people with different viewpoints and areas of expertise can come together to create impactful solutions,” Miller Foster said.
Several delegates said that BUILD Night was their favorite session of the semester, noting that it was fun to apply what they learned to create a tangible solution to a specific food waste issue.