This month's Short Talks from the Hill features Scott Lafontaine, an assistant professor in food chemistry in the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences and a researcher with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the U of A System Division of Agriculture.

Generally, Lafontaine's research interests include understanding the important chemical drivers of aroma, taste and mouthfeel, which define food and beverage quality, and how different factors influence these analytes in value-added products like beer, wine, saki and other, nonalcoholic, drinks. Some of this research has taken the form of studying whether rice might be used to improve the quality and acceptance of nonalcoholic beer. Lafontaine is also a co-director of the U of A Certificate of Proficiency in Brewing, which includes a nano-brewery housed at the U of A Beverage Development Facility.

Of the new Center for Brewing Innovation now being planned, Lafontaine says, "the goal is to have this building move-in ready by summer 2026... And the goal would be to have a production facility, which would be a state-of-the-art production facility, that could be used to design a number of different products, right? The goal was beverages here and beverages that are important to Arkansas. So that could be non-alcoholic beer. That could be saki or other different, rice-based beverages. Maybe even rice milk. Then we would have a flavor characterization lab and then a consumer, data-driven tasting area where we could get consumer feedback, let's say, on our own R&D projects or like our commercial partners' products in real time."

You can listen to Lafontaine's podcast by clicking on the link above or by visiting Research Frontiers, the home of research and economic development news at the U of A.

And remember, you can now listen to Short Talks programming wherever you get your podcasts. Previous podcasts can be found at the link above or by visiting arkansasresearch.uark.edu.

Thank you for listening!