Jarma Arroyo, Food Science Ph.D. Grad, Wins Institute for Perception Award

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Food science Ph.D. graduate Sara Jarma Arroyo is now a senior sensory and consumer scientist with PepsiCo, Inc.

Sara Jarma Arroyo, a recent Ph.D. graduate in food science, has been named winner of the 2022 Institute for Perception Student Award.

The annual international award goes to an undergraduate or graduate student who shows outstanding talent and performance in the field of sensory science, marketing, psychology, economics or related fields. She receives a commemorative plaque, $1,000 and travel to IFP's Nov. 7-10 meeting at the Greenbrier Resort in While Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

Jarma Arroyo earned her doctoral degree in food science with a concentration in sensory and consumer science.

She worked under the direction of Han-Seok Seo, professor of food science and a researcher and scientist with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station, the research arm of the U of A System Division of Agriculture. Seo also serves as director of the Sensory Science Center, where Jarma Arroyo worked.

"Sara is a talented and passionate researcher in the field of sensory and consumer science," Seo said. "Sara's research contributions, her enthusiastic commitment to sensory communities and her passion for the field of sensory and consumer science were recognized by this award."

As a student, she won the Terry Siebenmorgen Graduate Student Poster Presentation Competition at the 2022 Rice Industry Alliance Meeting, U of A's university-wide Three-Minute Thesis contest with her presentation "Eating Your Stress Away? Your Emotional State Impacts the Way You Perceive Food" and Bumpers College's Gamma Sigma Delta Poster and Oral Competition – Ph.D. Oral Poster Division.

She was also selected to receive the Institute of Food Technologists Feeding Tomorrow Graduate Scholarship ($2,000), received an honorable mention at the Sensory and Consumer Sciences Division poster competition at the 2020 IFT Meeting and actively served as a student representative within the Sensory and Consumer Sciences Division at the Institute of Food Technologists.

Jarma Arroyo is now senior sensory and consumer scientist with PepsiCo Inc. in Plano, Texas.

The Institute for Perception, founded in 1992, is a full-service research consulting firm specializing in services to help convert marketing concepts or technical inventions into innovative new products. It conducts extensive research on new models of human perception to provide a basis for methods to support product development, market research and advertising claim substantiation and offers training in those areas.

About the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences: Bumpers College provides life-changing opportunities to position and prepare graduates who will be leaders in the businesses associated with foods, family, the environment, agriculture, sustainability and human quality of life; and who will be first-choice candidates of employers looking for leaders, innovators, policy makers and entrepreneurs. The college is named for Dale Bumpers, former Arkansas governor and longtime U.S. senator who made the state prominent in national and international agriculture. For more information about Bumpers College, visit our website, and follow us on Twitter at @BumpersCollege and Instagram at BumpersCollege.

About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas' flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $2.2 billion to Arkansas' economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the few U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research and Economic Development News.