Being an ex-refugee didn’t stop Dr Mai Tran from getting her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in chemical and material engineering.
For her PhD thesis, Mrs Tran chose the humble spud;the subject of her main experiment was to reduce the oil content in potato chips.
“In western culture there’s a high consumption of potato chips and it’s not such a good thing,” says Mrs Tran.
Her investigation aimed at not only reducing the oil content in the potato chip but also reducing levels of cancer-causing chemical acrylamides. “Potatoes contain high amounts of amino acid and glucose;fried in high temperatures they produce acrylamide,” says Mrs Tran.
