Professor Ken Lee is the Food Innovation Center http://fic.osu.edu Director at Ohio State. This center was competitively funded in 2010 to advance the human condition by way of food. Ohio State is the only university to inspire all 14 colleges and more than 350 faculty members with direct interest in food improvement.  Lee works with renowned faculty and co-directors Steve Schwartz, Michael Leiblein and Steve Clinton who help inspire global impact with food discovery.

Lee also serves on the Steering Committee to set the agenda for the University Senate, is a co-investigator on the $4.7M Targeted Investment in Excellence for Public Health Preparedness, and serves the faculty advisory board to the Food Discovery theme of Ohio State.

Lee is a respected leader in the field of food science with 16 years experience as an academic department chair. He served on the Board of Directors and chaired several initiatives of the food science professional society, IFT. OSU selected Dr. Lee as a faculty expert media contact, providing expertise on food for Fox News, CBS News This Morning and ABC News. He taught the first course at UW-Madison to be broadcast live on cable television. His experience in facility design includes a $4M addition to UW-Madison’s Babcock Hall and a $17.2M food science building at OSU. The latter featured a successful development campaign that raised $12M for facilities and for faculty plus student advancement.

Dr. Lee provides leadership in food industry issues as past-president of the Food Update Foundation, and current service on the Board of Governors to the Center for Innovative Food Technology in Toledo. Federal appointments included the FDA’s Food Advisory Committee and service to the NAS-NRC Doctoral Review Planning Committee.

Dr. Lee was selected as an ACE leadership Fellow, assigned to the University of Wisconsin System Administration in 2009.  He helps advance food commercialization as the PI of a $3M Ohio Third Frontier Award (2012-14) and builds future leaders with several NIFA-USDA training grants.  He published 60 papers on nutrient inhibitors and food toxicants. He is an articulate academic speaker and delivered the December 7, 2001 Commencement address, the first graduating class post 9/11 joining a nation at war. In 2007 the Institute of Food Technologists awarded him the Carl Fellers award for bringing distinction to the profession of food science, and is immediate Past-President of Phi Tau Sigma, the Honorary Society for Food Science and Technology.