Dr. Christine Moresoli has been a faculty member since 1998. Her research is mainly in filtration and food processes. The Iron Warrior is interviewing her as part of an ongoing series of interviews with various faculty members. Read and enjoy!
Tell me about how you got to where you are now.
My path consists of small steps. I got my Bachelor’s from McGill University. I think I decided to go pursue grad studies because I wasn’t able to find an industrial position that interested me. I decided to go into fermentation, because biotech was big in the early 1980s and there was a lot of promise. Then, after my masters, I felt that fermentation was difficult to control, so I started to go into smaller-scale enzyme kinetics, and I also wanted a change of environment, so I contacted different schools in Europe. I got an offer from EPFL, in Lausanne in Switzerland, and then I wanted to know what I was getting into, so I went and visited them. They also wanted to know who I was, so I spent one day touring the labs, meeting the people, and deciding which of the two projects I would select. In the end, I went and did my PhD in Switzerland, and it was a wonderful exerience. At the end of my PhD I decided I wanted to come back to Canada, and I obtained a position at Agriculture Canada as an engineer working for 5 scientists on their research and looking at the engineering aspects of their research. After two years I felt I wanted something different; the time commitments and the position did not allow me to have my own research projects. They could not offer me a research position, so I felt that an academic position would allow me to develop my own research while contributing to training; I applied to the University of Sherbrooke. I got the position and enjoyed the challenges and the independent work. In the mid-1990s, finances in universities weren’t very good and Sherbrooke was affected. I started looking outside for more challenges, and I contacted Waterloo. That’s how I moved to Waterloo in 1998, and I’ve been here ever since. I’ve always been teaching first-year courses and because of my time at Agriculture Canada, I got interested in the food industry, and then I modified the food processing elective in Chem Eng, and I’ve been teaching those two courses predominantly.
What does your research focus on?
Now my research is multifold; it’s primarily materials, membrane filtration, and the food processing, mainly thermal operations, where we combine modeling with experimentation. Thermal operations are like baking: what kind of heat transfer you have, how does bread dough become bread, how does the structure form, and how you get rid of the water. How do real large-scale industrial baking ovens work? They are long tunnels, and the processes and thermal phenomena taking place are very different from those in your home oven. Now, I’m more into pasta and the drying of pasta- so it’s lower-temperature and we’re looking at what the impact is when you add health-related ingredients, like flax, to your pasta. How the drying is affected and how does it affect the taste and texture? What do you need to do to make a pasta that the customer is really going to enjoy? For example, flax contains a lot of oil- it can go rancid. The texture of the pasta also very much depends on how it is dried- we try to dry it slowly so it won’t be damaged as the moisture escapes. That’s the food-related work- we’re also looking at biopharmaceuticals and we’re also art of a large collaborative research network where we’re looking at monoclonal antibodies. They are used in cancer therapy. We’re looking at the final stage, when you want to purify those and make sure that they are safe for their application. I also initiated some work on making use of plant materials such as wheat proteins, to make edible coatings and and soy by-products to make composite materials for automotive applications. We’ve also worked for quite a few years now on membrane filtration applications in the productions of drinking water. We work with GE Water and Power and the Municipality of Peel, which has a very large membrane filtration system.
What are your teaching methods, and why do you use them? How were you taught in school?
In my classes, I try to get students to figure things out for themselves. When I was at McGill, the teaching was very traditional- that is, very much information delivery. I don’t mean to say that the teaching was bad- some of the people had a lot of passion in their teaching delivery, and it was stimulating. Still, I try not to do that. I try to get the students more engaged, and I believe it really helps. For example, in my food processing course, I use new food products in stores to show students the real-world applications of the concepts.
What can you say about the University of Waterloo as an institution?
What’s really good about it is the coop and all the resources offered to students, like the first year engineering office. That’s what attracts a lot of the students. The research side isn’t as well known, but it’s changing. Institutes are established and research resources are expanding. For Chem Eng, it’s a lot better to have this new building. At any rate, it’s a huge improvement over DWE.
Thank you for talking to us.
My pleasure.
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