The University of California, Davis, now houses a center dedicated to educating students and conducting in-depth research on one of the world’s most consumed beverages, known for giving people energy throughout the day: coffee.
The university launched its Coffee Center in May, with research focused on providing support to farmers, studying coffee sustainability and assessing food safety issues, among other things. The launch comes about a decade after the university offered its first course on coffee science.
Davis center director Bill Ristenpart said that historically, there has been more emphasis on research on beverages like wine and less on coffee.
“We’re trying to elevate coffee and make it a subject of scientific research and a source of scientific talent to support the industry and facilitate develop what is arguably the most significant beverage in the world,” said Ristenpart, a professor of chemical engineering.
UC Davis senior Shrishti Chezhian loads coffee beans into an industrial roaster at the Coffee Center at UC Davis in Davis, California, Monday, June 17, 2024.AP Photo/Haven Daley
UC Davis also has programs focused on winemaking and brewing industry research. The 7,000-square-foot Coffee Center facility is the first academic building in the country dedicated to coffee research and education, Ristenpart said. It is located in the UC Davis Arboretum near the Robert Mondavi Institute of Wine and Food Science on campus.
Laudia Anokye-Bempah, a biological systems engineering student, said she wanted to do coffee research in part “so I could control how the roasted beans go into the roaster.”
“We can control things like acidity levels,” Anokye-Bempah said.
Coffee Center at UC Davis, opened last month, on Monday, June 17, 2024.AP Photo/Haven Daley
There are other U.S. schools, including Texas A&M University and Vanderbilt University, that have delved into coffee research. But the UC Davis Coffee Center stands out in part because it focuses on multiple aspects of coffee research, including agriculture and chemistry, said Edward Fischer, professor of anthropology and director of the Institute for Coffee Studies at Vanderbilt.
“Coffee is such a convoluted compound,” Fischer said. “It’s really significant to bring all of these different aspects together, and Davis does just that.”
He added that students often leave Fischer’s classes looking at the world differently than is typically discussed in academic classes.
“In the Western academic tradition, we divide the world into all these silos, right — biology and anthropology and economics and all these kinds of things,” he said. “Coffee is a way of showing how all these boundaries that we draw in the world are really arbitrary.”
Camilla Yuan, a UC Davis graduate and director of coffee and roasting at Camellia Coffee Roasters, a Sacramento coffee shop, visited the Coffee Center at Davis last week.
“Having a hub and resources for people who are interested in specialty coffee or just the coffee world in general, I think it’s super exhilarating and cold,” Yuan said. “I’m glad something like this is happening.”
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