A trio of Purdue students stirred their way to success, winning the $10,000 top prize in the Sara Lee Innovation Award competition in April.

The team’s winning entry is named Tuscan Essentials Biscotti. Biscotti are hard Italian pastries that often are dipped in a hot drink, such as coffee, to soften them before they are eaten. The new twist to the winning product is that as the pastry is stirred in the hot drink, it adds caramel or raspberry flavoring to the drink.

Photo by David Umberger

Patti Tanner, (left), Matt Wolf and their teammate Kayleen Wichlinski (not pictured) split the $10,000 top prize in the Sara Lee Innovation Award competition which encourages students to create new food products that could be developed by Sara Lee.

Team members from Purdue Agriculture were Patti Tanner, a graduate student in food science from Bonners Ferry, Idaho, and Matt Wolf, a biological and food process engineering major from Evansville, Ind. The third member was Kayleen Wichlinski, a dietetics and business nutrition major from Valparaiso, Ind.

Their entry edged out a creation entered by the second-place team, an on-the-go snack that featured bagel sticks packaged with a yogurt dipping sauce.

Sara Lee has asked both teams to present their products to the company later this year for evaluation for possible commercialization.

Purdue Agriculture students on the second-place team were Allie Clemons, a food science major from West Lafayette; Jessica Lee, a food manufacturing operations major from Kankakee, Ill.; and Erin Rosswurm, an agricultural and biological engineering major from Columbus, Ind. Other team members were Stephen Morrison, a hospitality and tourism management major, and Mindy Quinn, a foods and nutrition major, both from West Lafayette.

The teams began working last fall on the projects, which were scored by a panel of judges composed of Sara Lee executives and Purdue professors. In addition to evaluating each item’s innovation and originality, judges also considered its potential marketability.

Students from the sophomore to graduate level in four departments were eligible: agricultural and biological engineering, foods and nutrition, food science, and hospitality and tourism management.

Products were limited to items that would fit into Sara Lee’s current product lines of bakery items, meats, sauces, dressings or coffee.

Two teams of Purdue students captured top spots and cash prizes for projects that produced environmentally friendly clay shooting pigeons and healthier soy waffle bowls for the Soybean Innovation Contest.

“The goal of this competition is really to allow students to take the knowledge they’ve gained in the classroom and apply it to understanding how new products are developed,” says Bernie Tao, Indiana Soybean Alliance professor of soybean utilization at Purdue. “Many of the students who participate go on to start their own businesses or to be leaders in industry because they’ve gained the understanding and ability to practically apply what they’ve learned in the classroom.”

The first-place team earned $7,500 for team members to share, $8,000 for their adviser’s department, and $2,000 for the adviser. The Indiana Soybean Alliance sponsors the Soybean Innovation Contest through funds earned from the Indiana Soybean Checkoff program. The competition is open to Purdue students of all majors.

Successful products from past contests have included soybean crayons, candles, lip balm, ski wax, dessert topping and a soy-based gelatin.

Agricultural and biological engineering seniors David Conway of Highland Park, Ill., and Ben Hall of Merritt Island, Fla., spent hours with John Mullen, a senior in health science from Dayton, Ohio, and management sophomore Adrian Boeh of Lebanon, Ind., trying to come up with an original idea.

“It came to the point where we were just going through hobbies we had and seeing if we could apply them to soybeans,” Conway says. “On a wild tangent I started thinking about the old video game Duck Hunt, and we came up with the idea of soy shooting targets.”

Because EcoDisc is formed using biodegradable soy products in place of the petroleum products currently used in clay pigeons, the discs are environmentally friendly.

The waffle bowl team consisted of Todd Case, a food science senior from Fishers, Ind., Brian Hunter, a School of Management junior from Mill Creek, Ind. and Clay Arnett, a senior from Circle Pines, Minn., studying organizational leadership and supervision. Other finalist projects included an all-natural after-sun lotion, a soy-based coal replacement option for coal-powered stoves and a soy-based liquor.