Three Cal Poly teams received awards at the Paperboard Packaging Alliance Student Design Challenge (PPA SDC) 2021, with students from the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences serving on two of them.

Recent food science alumna Maia Nelson and food science senior Chris Cheung were both on multi-disciplinary teams honored in the competition, with Nelson’s team placing in the top three and Cheung in the top nine. Nelson’s team “Sweet Pea” designed a packaging system for gardening education and Cheung’s team “EcoSLO” designed a packaging system for clean-ups of natural environments.  

The PPA SDC is a prestigious North American competition to foster awareness and appreciation of paperboard packaging with university educators and the next generation of packaging design decision-makers. With impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic in mind and the role that the paperboard packaging industry plays in local communities, the design theme this year was to create a packaging system for a community relief organization.