Rate My Professor Robert McGorrin

Robert McGorrin is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Food Science and Technology at Oregon State University, College of Agricultural Sciences. He holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Northwestern University (1973), an M.S. (1976) and Ph.D. (1980) in Organic/Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before joining Oregon State University in 2000 as Professor and Department Head, McGorrin spent over 23 years in research and development at Kraft Foods and Quaker Oats. There, he advanced chromatographic and spectroscopic methods to identify novel flavor compounds in Cheddar cheese, analyzed contaminants in foods and packaging, studied cheese lipid oxidation, and developed flavor systems for fat-free products, earning three Director’s Awards of Excellence for impacts on product quality and healthfulness.

As Department Head of Food Science and Technology for over 20 years until his retirement after a 25-year career at OSU, McGorrin oversaw operations across three sites with 19 tenure-track faculty, grew undergraduate enrollment by more than 500 percent through recruitment, hired nine tenure-track faculty in flavor chemistry, brewing science, food chemistry, enology, and food safety, created and expanded the fermentation program, and secured over $1.6 million from industry and alumni for endowed professorships and scholarships. His research focuses on flavor chemistry and trace volatile analysis, including chemistry and interactions of flavor and food components, identification of key aroma compounds in dairy and food products such as oats, raspberries, and hazelnuts, and effects of processing and packaging on flavor generation and deterioration. Additional interests encompass food analysis, chromatography and separations, spectrometry including GC/MS, GC/MS/MS, and GC/IR, and natural products chemistry. McGorrin has authored or co-authored four chemistry books and 13 chapters on topics like thermally-generated flavors, character-impact compounds, sulfur compounds, and flavor-food interactions. Key publications include editing 'Flavor of Dairy and Food Products' (ACS Symposium Series 971, 2007, with K.R. Cadwallader and M.A. Drake), 'Key Aroma Compounds in Oats and Oat Cereals' (Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2019), 'The Significance of Volatile Sulfur Compounds in Food Flavors' (2011), 'One Hundred Years of Progress in Food Analysis' (2009), and 'Flavor Analysis of Dairy Products' (2007). His research on hazelnut sensory characteristics has benefited Oregon’s hazelnut industry.

McGorrin’s contributions earned him Fellow status with the American Chemical Society (2014), Institute of Food Technologists, and ACS Agricultural and Food Chemistry Division (2025, first 'triple Fellow' in OSU Food Science and Technology), plus the ACS AGFD Distinguished Service Award. He served on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (1994-2018) and Chemosensory Perception (2007-present), chaired the ACS AGFD (1994) and Flavor Subdivision, was twice-elected president of the Chicago Chemists’ Club, held IFT Board of Directors (2015-2018) and multiple chair roles, and contributed to committees like USDA-NIFA Improving Food Quality panel and Western Regional Aquaculture Center Executive Committee. He is a certified food scientist.