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ARS Home » Midwest Area » Peoria, Illinois » National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research » Functional Foods Research » People » Hongsik Hwang

Hong-Sik Hwang

Research Chemist
 /ARSUserFiles/50100515/images/FFR People/Scientists/Hong-Sik Hwang Web.jpg

Phone: (309) 681-6584
Fax: (309) 681-6685
Room 3032
USDA ARS NCAUR
1815 N University St
Peoria IL 61604

Biography and Research

Hong-Sik Hwang has worked as research chemist at ARS in Peoria since 2010. After receiving a Ph.D. (1996) in organic chemistry from Texas Tech University, he conducted postgraduate research in polymer chemistry at University of Kansas and in oleochemistry at ARS in Peoria. He also worked at Indium Corporation of America for 9 years for the development of adhesives used in electronics. Currently, Dr. Hwang works with a group of scientists at NCAUR on the project “Increasing Food Shelf-Life, Reducing Food Waste, and Lowering Saturated Fats with Natural Antioxidants and Oleogels”. The primary goals of this research are to develop new technologies to structure commodity vegetable oils so that they can be used in place of hydrogenated oils and imported tropical fats used for margarines and shortenings; to develop new natural antioxidant systems to improve the oxidative stability of commodity oils; and to discover and quantify value-added bioactive ingredients and antioxidants in low-value food and agricultural processing streams. Approaches to these objectives include developing new oleogel technologies, evaluating and understanding the activity of naturally occurring antioxidants, and developing new sources of antioxidant or bioactive lipids from agricultural processing fractions or coproducts. The success of this research will provide new technologies to replace trans and saturated fats with unsaturated fats in food products, to extend the shelf life and stability of fried foods, and to utilize agricultural wastes to produce new bioactive ingredients and antioxidants.