For the healthy nutrition of the growing world population food safety and technologies to be developed in this field have critical importance. The IFBBC aims to create, test and enable the scaling of effective solutions and evidence-based approaches to a defined set of future critical global trends impacting food biosafety and biotechnology. This center was established in October 2017 as a result of the academic collaboration between Hacettepe University (HU), an institute of higher education located in Ankara, Turkey and Michigan State University (MSU), an institute of higher education located in East Lansing, Michigan, United States of America. This cooperation includes both local authority and HU and MSU researchers, and there is no other center established under the international cooperation agreement which continues to work in the field of Food Biosafety and Biotechnology.
Mission of the Center:
The mission of the Center is about Food Biosafety, which is closely linked to the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals; Goal 2-Zero Hunger; Goal 3-Good Health and Well-Being; Goal 12-Responsible Production and Consumption and Goal 17-Partnerships for the Goals.
IFBBC has developed a model in line with Turkey Biotechnology Strategic Action Plan. This plan prioritizes R&D studies to develop biotechnological techniques and applications in the agriculture and food sector, taking into account risks to the environment and human health. In addition, this plan aims to become a country that effectively applies the biosafety criteria for products manufactured using advanced technology within the framework of international developments.
History:
2015- Memorandum of Understanding (the Agreement) between Hacettepe University (HU) and Michigan State University (MSU) was signed on 12.02.2015 after the approval of Council of Higher Education.
2016- Within the scope of this agreement, on April 9-23, 2016, MSU was visited by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Remziye Yilmaz from Hacettepe University Engineering Faculty Food Engineering Department.
2017- As a result of this visit, it was decided to organize an International Food Biosafety and Biotechnology Workshop on 9-11 October 2017, as well as it was decided to open the International Food Biosafety and Biotechnology Research and Extension Center (IFBBC). The people interviewed during this visit are listed below:
On 30 October 2017, with the realization of the workshop and the opening of the Center, a Success Story was read by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) at the American Parliament.
2018- In July 2018, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Remziye Yilmaz, Prof. Dr. Umran Uygun and Prof. Dr. Halil Vural from HU IFBBC participated in the first Scientific Board of Directors meeting at MSU. In November 2018, Prof. Dr. Muraleedharan Nair and Dr. Sean Lawrie from MSU visited Hacettepe University to give various seminars. Also, Nurten Ural, US Honorary Consul General of North America, visited Hacettepe University to introduce MSU.
2019- In March 2019, from MSU, Prof. Dr. Zeynep Ustunol, Dr. Robert Coffey and Lewis Cardenas and Honorary Consul General Nurten Ural visited Hacettepe University to give a conference and to make various contacts to increase coordination between the two universities.
With the establishment of the center, Mevlana and Erasmus+ K107 (Key Action 1 – Mobility for learners and staff – Higher Education Student and Staff Mobility Inter-institutional agreement 2014-20[21] between HU and MSU) Agreements were signed between Michigan State University and Hacettepe University.
On 12-26 May 2019, Researchers from MSU visited Hacettepe University to carry out the project titled as “Performing Risk Assessment in Genetically Modified Food and Feed Products Using Omic Technologies”.
In June 2019, IFBBC was nominated in the “International Cooperation” category for the Council of Higher Education Corporate Excellence Award as a successful international cooperation model.
Established in a medium-sized area, IFBBC will host such meetings under the current HUNITEK (Hacettepe University Applied Technologies Application and Research Center) and the cooperation between the two universities will continue to increase.
