Pieter Walstra Award 2024: unravelling cow’s milk proteins 

Dr. Inge Gazi is the winner of the Pieter Walstra Award 2024. She received the award for her research on cow’s milk proteins using mass spectrometry, an important step in unraveling the mysteries surrounding milk proteins. Dr. Gazi is affiliated with the University of Utrecht. She received the award during the spring symposium of the Dutch Society for the Advancement of Dairy Science in Den Bosch. 

The Pieter Walstra Award jury named Dr. Gazi’s doctoral research ‘Unravelling elusive mysteries of bovine milk proteins by mass spectrometry’ from last year as the best international scientific dissertation on dairy research. Dr. Gazi received the award from jury member Mohèb Elwakiel (Dutch Dairy Association) who praised her work. “Gazi’s research meets all the qualities needed to win this fine award,” Elwakiel said. “The research is very well executed and innovative, has attention to detail and gives a boost to new scientific research in dairy.” 

Honorable mentions went to two other researchers: Dr. Mengxiao Yang of Massey University in New Zealand for her dissertation on the interaction between milk proteins and digestive enzymes, and Dr. Boxin Deng of Wageningen University & Research for research on microfluidic analysis of dynamic processes occurring during bubble formation and stabilization.

Fostering dairy research 
The biennial Pieter Walstra Award was established in 2012 by the Dutch Dairy Association to stimulate international scientific research on dairy, and was presented for the seventh time this year. The award comes with a cash prize of 3,000 euros. The jury is made up of representatives of Dutch dairy research from science and the dairy industry. This year, that jury consisted of Chairman Prof. Dr. Thom Huppertz, Prof. Dr. Ingeborg Haagsma-Boels and Dr. Mohèb Elwakiel.

The Pieter Walstra Prize is named after Wageningen professor Pieter Walstra (†May 2012), who made a significant contribution to fundamental knowledge around dairy technology. Walstra produced scientific research that was fundamental in nature, but also strongly inspired by practice. The results of his research have given Dutch dairy research and the dairy industry that implemented the scientific insights a prominent place in the world.