Welcome to Foods For Purpose

  Dr. Yael Vodovotz received her B.S. in food science from the University of Illinois, her M.S. in food science from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada and her Ph.D. degree from the University of Massachusetts. Following her doctoral degree Yael held a postdoctoral position at NASA as part of a joint effort between University of Houston and NASA-Johnson Space Center where she worked on various aspects of the Advanced Life Support food system as well as teaching at the University of Houston. Her NASA work continued as an Assistant Professor at Baylor Medical School, part of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute. She joined The Ohio State Department of Food Science and Technology as an Assistant Professor in 2000, and has been working on physico-chemical and molecular properties of foods with an emphasis on carbohydrate systems and functional (health promoting) foods using techniques borrowed from polymer and material sciences. Dr. Vodovotz received her tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 2006 and full professor in 2012. She has over 70 publications and an edited book on bread staling. She was named Director of the Center of Advanced Functional Food, Research and Entrepreneurship in 2016. Her current projects involve physico-chemical characterization of functional foods, their development and testing from inception through clinical trials.  

Drew is employed at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center as Culinary Director in the Department of Nutrition Services. His primary responsibilities include overseeing patient and retail food production, menu development, and culinary team building. Drew’s food service experience spans over 25 years and he has served as a professional chef in private country club, small restaurants and large scale corporate owned businesses. He joined the Wexner Medical Center in 1997 and continues to hone his culinary skills by working closely with new culinary graduates and students by building relationships with local culinary schools.   He received an Associate Degree in Culinary Arts from Hocking College and an Bachelor of Arts in Food and Beverage Management.  He is a Certified Instructor for the Healthy Kids in Schools program sponsored by the Ohio Department of Education. Drew also is a certified member of the American Culinary Federation and has been part of a team that has received multiple best concept awards, Texas Pete recipe challenge national winner and Top Chef Award for the Ohio Pork Council.  Drew has led classes in kitchen design, menu development, garden to table, knife safety and is active in the community as well as providing cooking demonstrations at local schools, fire departments and fitness centers.     Drew has helped lead teams and has personally participated in The Ohio State Fair, FCCLA, Prostart, ACF Presidents Gala, ACF golf outing, ACF Clambake, Kids in the Kitchen, Skills USA, Taste to Remember, Taste the Future and was a presenter at the 2016 ACF National Conference. Drew also currently serves on the board of directors for The Columbus ACF Chapter and the MUFSO foodservice conference board as well as the Chefs Food advisory committee.  Drew was most recently awarded the Chef of the year award for Columbus Ohio.

Kristian is employed at Oracle as an Enterprise Cloud Platform Representative.  Kristian has over 17 years sales experience engaging with Fortune 500 companies across the United States.   In his career he has consistently attained President's Club nominations for exceeding his yearly quotas resulting in multi million dollars in revenue.  Kristian has worked with software companies that have been privately held, transitioned to acquisition and also to publicly traded entities.  He is a proud graduate of The Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology.    In addition Kristian is a business partner with Trattoria Roma, a classic Italian restaurant in Grandview that has been doing business in Columbus for 27 years.  With this partnership Kristian's responsibilities have been to modernize the online and social media presence for the store and working on new business relationships to expand the brand into previously untapped markets.  In his spare time he volunteers for Special Olympics and has also been a part of Big Brothers, Big Sisters.