MINNEAPOLIS — In an announcement kept secret until the last minute, Debi Rogers, Ph.D., director of bakery services at AIB International, Manhattan, Kas., was named this year's winner of the William F. Geddes Memorial Award by AACC International.

Debi Rogers, Ph.D., director of bakery services at AIB International

Dr. Rogers, the 2012 past-president of AACCI, was surprised and stunned by the award.

“This is quite an honor,” she told the audience gathered in Minneapolis at the group’s centennial meeting. The award is given for zeal and unselfish industry by an AACCI member in service to the association.

“This is a great organization,” Dr. Rogers said. “It is well worth putting your energy into it.”

This isn’t Dr. Rogers’ first honor from AACCI. In 2008, she received its Excellence in Teaching Award and the group’s Milling & Baking Division named her its Myron D. “Mike” Baustien Award winner in 2010.

Also at the opening session on Oct. 19, two awards were announced.

AACCI presented Kwan Hwa Park with its Alsberg-French-Schoch Memorial Lectureship Award for distinguished contributions to fundamental starch chemistry. Dr. Park is professor emeritus at Seoul National University in Seoul, Korea.

The group’s Thomas Burr Osborne Medal was given to Per B.J. Åman, professor emeritus of plant product science in the Department of Food Science, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala. The medal honors distinguished contributions in cereal science. This award also carries recognition as an AACCI fellow.

AACCI named two additional fellows: Jonathan W. DeVries, retired senior technical manager of Medallion Laboratories of General Mills, Inc.; and Peter Koehler, vice-director of the German Research Center for Food Chemistry in Friesing, Germany.

At the plenary session on Oct. 20, two awards will be made.

Koushik Seetharaman will receive the Excellence in Teaching Award posthumously. He was a professor at University of Guelph in Ontario and was scientific program chair for AACCI’s 2014 annual meeting.

The Young Scientist Research Award will be given to Laura M. Nyström, assistant professor of food biochemistry in ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Zurich, Switzerland.