The Graduate Program in Food Science and Technology (PPGCTA) is part of the Institute of Food Science and Technology (ICTA) of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), located at Campus do Vale, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
PPGCTA began its activities in 2005 offering M.S. degrees in Food Science and Technology. In 2011, the Program expanded its goals, offering Ph.D. degrees in the same area. Since the beginning of its activities, 133 Masters and 34 Doctors have been graduated. In the last four-year CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) evaluation, the Program achieved score 5.
PPGCTA aims training human resources of excellence, with a solid academic-scientific background, capable of acting in different areas of Food Science and Technology, such as food chemistry, food safety and microbiology, sensory science, functional foods for health, food safety engineering, advanced food processing technologies, food packaging, food biotechnology, and food production sustainability.
The Program has an essentially multidisciplinary character to approach classic and modern topics related to food and beverage production in two main research lines: Food Quality and Food Processing.
PPGCTA’s interdisciplinarity is partially due to its 18 outstanding faculty members who work integrating multiple research lines to promote knowledge and innovation to meet the national and international food and beverages research demand.
PPGCTA’s internationalization has been expanding, increasing the number of interactions with foreign institutions and research groups. Internationalization actions could be accomplished mainly due to CAPES/Print Program, which provided exchange of knowledge in several degrees and modalities, such as receiving foreign researchers to teach courses and give lectures and speech to PPGCTA students, sending students for doctoral-sandwich internships, sending professors of the Program as visiting professors in foreign universities, developing international research projects with formal support from Brazilian and international founding agencies. These interactions seek to enhance knowledge dissemination and increase PPGCTA’s scientific production quality.