The monthly Oxford Science Cafe will return with a lecture on the chemical properties and history of making dairy products. The free event will take place from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. tonight at the Lusa Bakery Bistro and Bar.
The forum is the latest Science Cafe organized by associate professor Marco Cavaglia of the University of Mississippi Department of Physics and Astronomy. This month’s lecture, entitled “Chemistry of Milk,” will be presented by professor of chemistry and biochemistry Susan Pedigo and senior biochemistry major Lemuel Tsang.
Pedigo earned her doctorate degree in biochemistry from the University of Iowa and worked as a postdoctoral scientist at Vanderbilt University before she began working at the University of Mississippi. This will be her first lecture at a Science Cafe event.
“The planning is that I will do the background on proteins and fats and milk in general …how it’s made, and that kind of stuff…and secreted and its chemical components. And Lemuel [Tsang] is going to do the applied part of it,” she said.
Pedigo has known Tsang the majority of his four years at the university and Tsang is currently taking Pedigo’s class on the chemistry of French food. She said he has an interest in starches and other chemistry relating to food. Their reading on how chemistry is used to give foods taste and texture led to them choosing milk as a topic, over other food-related items such as eggs and flour.
They share the sentiment in hoping this lecture encourages people to think about an everyday object such as milk, to see it in a new perspective and think more about its molecular composition.
“We are chemistry. As a biochemist, you think of life as a series of chemical processes… milk is just part of that,” Pedigo said. “I think that that’s what’s so fun about biochemistry, is that a lot of our chemistry, really, is that. What you take for granted, becomes what you discuss, and so it makes you look at your world and think of your world in a different way.”
Pedigo said Tsang’s energy and curiosity about the topic are the primary reasons she enjoys working with him. She also said she considers partnering with students for presentations such as this to be an important part of working and teaching as a professor.
The Oxford Science Cafe’s purpose is to have conversations about “the science we know and the science we don’t know,” according to its website. Pedigo likes that these events allow for questions to be asked and for scientific views to be accessed by others.
