Mita Munshi

Mita Munshi is a Graduate Student in the Food Science and Human Nutrition Department at Iowa State University and is affiliated with the Polymer and Food Protection Consortium. She is doing her Ph.D. under the supervision of Dr. Greg Curtzwiler and serving as a Graduate Research Assistant. Her research interest is focused on characterizing mixed plastic waste stream from Material Recovery Facilities (MRF) to understand SUPF feedstock variability, innovating industry recycling protocol to obtain decontaminated SUPFs and gathering knowledge on how to develop and demonstrate a plasma-biological hybrid technology to upcycle mixed single-use flexible plastic film (SUPF) wastes into polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). Her research at Iowa State University is funded by DOE/EERE/ Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO). She has her first Ph.D. degree in Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Jashore University of Science and Technology (JUST) from Bangladesh, and is an awardee of the University Grants Commission Scholarship, Bangladesh. Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology was her major during her bachelor's and master’s degree from JUST, Bangladesh. Her master's research work was funded with NST Fellowship by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Bangladesh. Mita has experience in decontamination techniques, polymer characterization, (DSC, TGA, MFI, FTIR), proximate composition analysis, molecular and morphological identification of fungus, bioactivity screening (cytotoxicity and antimicrobial), chemical screening, etc.