Advancing insect agriculture through collaboration
What is CEIF?
The Center for Environmental Sustainability through Insect Farming (CEIF) represents a first-of-its-kind research center that helps the Insect Agriculture Sector realize its potential to sustainably deliver alternative proteins, functional/therapeutic ingredients, and more.
We are working with Industry, Academia, and Government to pursue foundational, pre-competitive research that will drive growth of the Insect Agriculture sector.
Sound like you? Support our mission by joining our initiative.
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We have one planet with limited resources.
Insect farming is part of the solution. Less water. Less land.
Less greenhouse gas emissions.
More options.
We provide high quality research that meets the needs of industry, so that industry, in turn, can further explore the use of insect protein, with suitable regulatory approvals, as food for humans and animals.
Foundational research that will drive growth of the Insect Agriculture sector
CEIF SEMINAR SERIES SPOTLIGHT
The CEIF Seminar Series offers regular presentations from researchers and guest lecturers on various aspects of insect agriculture. These include discussions of papers in the CEIF Digital Library, presentations by experts, and detailed explorations of CEIF projects.
In this Seminar Spotlight, Judit Pénzes of Rutgers University discusses the limitations of metagenomic-based virus discovery, which relies on sequence homology and struggles with identifying higher-ranking taxa. She proposes an alternative imaging approach using electron microscopy. The example she highlights is a pandemic affecting superworms, the larval form of darkling beetles. Pénzes aims to use cryo-EM and 3D image reconstruction to identify the causative agent of this superworm pandemic, highlighting the potential of imaging techniques in novel virus discovery. (As of February 2025, Judit Pénzes is a Research Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University.)
