Thank you so much to our community for all the congratulations and support!!

Retriever Essentials, represented by student volunteers Nhi Nguyen '25, biochemistry and bioinformatics, and Ben Bhattarai '23, biology and psychology, is a second place finalist in the 2023 Wilbur Ellis Innovation Award. Announced at the end of September, the honorable mention award--given to only four schools--recognizes the student teams with the most innovative strategies for providing food for a growing world population.

Nguyen and Bhattarai's proposal aimed to address the water scarcity in agriculture which affects the ability to feed a growing world population sustainably. Their project proposed the use of halophytic (salt-tolerant) algae to desalinate saltwater in order to increase freshwater availability to enhance agricultural yields and to create highly nutritious food products. Nguyen and Bhattarai believe their project also may help resolve some of the impacts of global warming on food production and transportation, including the growth of algae; limited fossil fuels; and ocean acidification due to high carbon dioxide. Both hope to continue their research into ways to eliminate food insecurity.

Read the article in UMBC Magazine.

Coverage of the award also appeared on WLNS and AG Web.

Learn more about how to support Retriever Essentials, a faculty, staff, and student partnership to tackle food insecurity in our UMBC community.

Hi everyone! After some more planning and thinking, I decided to not only increase the maximum amount of entries, but to extend the deadline to October 18th! So if you haven’t already, now is the time to submit your recipes!

Also, if you click on the link and it says “You Need Permission”, don’t worry. All you have to do is sign into your UMBC google account (the [insert name]@umbc.edu), and click the link again.

Link:  https://forms.gle/tQ91foVJBabw3k5J7

!! WE WILL BE ACCEPTING MORE RECIPES FROM NOW UNTIL OCTOBER 18TH AT 11:59PM. REMEMBER, ONLY 1 PER PERSON!!

Again, please be sure to make sure all of your information is correct before you submit.

We are so excited to have you be part of UMBC's Cookbook!