Jessica Prenni is a professor in the Colorado State University Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture.   

Her research is focused on developing novel analytical methods for analyzing biological samples. Prenni’s team is currently part of a large global effort called the Periodic Table of Food Initiative.  

She compared this work to gene sequencing in that the information will enable “big data” mining to answer questions like “how does the environment where food is produced impact its composition?”, “How does the composition of food change when it is processed or cooked?” and “How does the composition of a food vary by type?”   

Prenni earned a Ph.D in analytical chemistry from the University of Colorado Boulder, and later worked as a postdoctoral scholar for the Scripps Research Institute in California. She has been at CSU since 2003.