Food for ThoughtPresident Jayathi Murthy on agriculture, innovation and OSU’s land-grant mission in action.

Why is the food and beverage industry important to Oregon State?

As a land-grant university, Oregon State was explicitly set up to build connections to the agricultural sector — and forestry and fisheries — and to transfer knowledge from research into practice. Of course, the original conception was to help with mechanical machinery, with fertilizers, new kinds of crop strains and things like that, but food today is more than that.

Now there are connections to communities, ties to sustainability and climate change, ties to nutrition and health, economics, business, and so much else that rides on the food ecosystem. Oregon State is a part of all of those things. And then of course there is the emerging tie to technology, data and data science and computation, plus new research on plant genomics, technologies like CRISPR and so much more. So much is tied to basic scientific research and the translation of this work into the food world.

Land-grant universities have always linked practical needs like food with innovation. How do you see that connection today?

For us, the use of AI and robotics in food, agriculture, forestry and fisheries is a natural connection. There’s lots of work being done on the use of AI in precision farming, controlling precisely how much water and fertilizer you need, so that you’re not polluting the environment while doing very important agricultural work.

And I should also mention the use of AI in predicting an evolving climate and addressing that evolution in the kinds of crops you plant and the ways in which you’re going to irrigate them. All of those things are now tied to the use of AI in making long-term predictions about the evolution of our farms and our forests and in helping our farmers adapt.

How does experiential learning like the Beaver Classic Creamery help prepare OSU students for success?

The thing that I’m realizing about agriculture, and this is also true of other things that we teach — for example, engineering or forestry — is that these are intensely practical fields, right?

You’re absolutely teaching students science. You’re teaching them biochemistry, biology, soil science — all of the basics. But at the end of the day, these young people are going to go work in the food industry, and, therefore, taking the science that they’ve learned in the classroom and applying it is going to be very much a part of what they do as employees.

Creating that pathway early as a part of their curriculum is a big part of the OSU ethos. That’s just the philosophy with which we teach.

Did I hear there’s an ice cream flavor in your honor?

Oh, that was such fun. A student, Sindhura Karuturi, came up with a number of flavors — all of which were wonderful. I was only allowed to choose one, but the others were all close seconds! She knew I drank a lot of tea, so she built flavors around kinds of teas — Earl Grey and, of course, chai, and so on. We had a tasting right here in this office. The one we chose is complex, with all kinds of spices, cloves and cardamom. It’s called Chai-athi Murthy. I don’t know if they still have any of it left, but if they do, you’ve got to go get some!

Sindhura herself is so interesting. Ice cream is not her biggest interest — it’s actually cheese. So now she’s off to do a master’s program in France, sponsored by a French company. She’ll work at their production plant there and then return to their California cheese operations. She told me she doesn’t speak any French, but she is going to live with a French family. She’s throwing herself into the culture, into a new place, into learning new things. In so many ways, that’s exactly what you want for your students.

The creamery was just one part of the Withycombe Hall renovation, which also created the Tillamook Dairy Innovators Lab and the Erath Family Foundation Winery Laboratory. How do partnerships like these with industry fit into the university’s mission?

They play right into our mission. We want to do research that is relevant. Our strategic plan talks about big ideas leading to big solutions, and this is the solutions part. There are lots of ideas cooked up by our researchers, but translating those into real use does require industry telling us what is workable and what their needs actually are.

What’s something coming up this new academic year that you’re really excited about?

I am so glad to have the students back — their energy and sheer excitement — I really, really love that. This year, the big focus for me is the Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex. You can actually see the walls now. It’s coming up really fast. I want to see that complex take off and come to life. That’s what we’re working hard on. All the AI that we’ve been talking about in ag, in forestry, in oceanography and robotics and health — all of that will come to pass because this will be the locus of AI at OSU and certainly the locus of AI in Oregon.

What role does food play in your idea of a good life?

Food is sustenance, food is health, food is pleasure. It’s all of those things to all of us. But it’s so much more. You remember Marcel Proust and his madeleines — food offers a connection to one’s past. One bite of a cookie can make you remember your childhood. Food is memory, food is culture, food is history. As a person who immigrated from India, I can see how potent the connection to food is. There’s so much in your life that is transformed through the act of immigration, but the connection to the food of your childhood, to the food of your culture, remains.  

Follow President Murthy on LinkedIn.