Fulton Schools Professor Michael Kozicki and Assistant Research Professor Yago Gonzalez Velo are part of a multidisciplinary team of engineers and scientists hoping to use technology to help prevent foodborne illnesses. Funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the project that also involves researchers from Northern Arizona University is exploring the use of dendritic tags to enable tracing food at any point in the supply chain. Dendrites are shapes that can be found in the natural world, such as tree branches and blood vessels. By producing these kinds of tags electrochemically or photochemically, Kozicki says, they can enable singular identities for food products that are impossible to duplicate or forge — unlike standard bar codes and other identifying labeling. Read more about Kozicki and Velo’s work.