Growing up in the city of Surabaya in East Java, Indonesia, senior culinology student Kaylin Prayitno started dreaming of attending Fresno State at the age of six when she saw Fresno State memorabilia around the house.
Both her father, Winata, and mother, Merlinda, attended Fresno State and graduated with degrees in information systems and finance, respectively.
That led to her first visit to campus, over 8,500 miles away, when she was in junior high school. She returned again in high school when her older sister, Katherine Nathania, became a Fresno State food science and nutrition student herself.
At that point, Prayitno had started to hear about and research the strength of the program, and how it combined her passion for food and the science behind it.
“Fresno State has always been a top choice,” Prayitno said, “and I loved its emphasis on hands-on classes and the ability to explore a wide variety of career paths within the food industry.”
In 2020, when COVID-19 forced her to study remotely, it created a new learning opportunity when the family opened their own coffee shop. Prayitno learned how to develop recipes for the cafe’s food and beverages, and develop marketing-related materials like menus and social media posts.
When she started as a freshman at Fresno State, campus life had returned to normal, and she began working at the campus creamery.
Over the span of 1 1/2 years, she helped make ice cream, milk, cheese and iced tea products, and develop standard operating documents to help students and staff improve daily production efficiency and consistency.
“Being able to work with the campus creamery managers was a great opportunity to learn from their years of food processing expertise and get real-world training,” Prayitno said. “It was also a great chance to meet other students, develop my communication skills and learn how to work as a team. It was a wonderful setting for my first job as I adapted to a new country and learned a good work ethic. The team was very supportive and pushed me out of my comfort zone.”
With a student-run dairy, creamery, and Gibson Farm Market all nearby on campus, she has seen the many steps in creating high-quality dairy products up close.
These experiences, and a class then taught by former faculty Dr. Carmen Licon Cano, positioned her to work on a class research project that investigated consumer perceptions of plant-based milk for the 2022 High Impact Practices Symposium. Their data centered on which milk substitutes had the most similar taste and mouthfeel to actual dairy milk.
Licon was impressed with Prayitno’s work ethic and background, and recommended she apply to the Cornell University Food Science Summer Scholars Program in 2023, even though it was only a few weeks before the deadline. Prayitno was ultimately accepted into the program and studied consumer acceptability of light-exposed milk.
Kaylin Prayitno and her family.
“Even though it was for only part of the summer, the Cornell program covered so much,” Prayitno said. “It opened my eyes to how research is conducted at a high level. It was great to meet students from different backgrounds. I even met a Cornell master’s student who was a Fresno State alumnus, Bailey Gong, who spoke at one of our events.”
When she returned to Fresno State for her junior year, she was an ideal candidate to join the Jordan College Honors Cohort. The two-year program pairs students with faculty mentors to conduct a final research project. The process helps students gain skills that are valued by graduate programs and organizations hiring students with experience in scientific research programs.
The past year, Prayitno has helped Dr. Jamie Levitt conduct a survey of dairy processors across the nation about how educational and training courses are meeting the industry’s needs. That same area is an emphasis of the Pacific Coast Coalition-Dairy Business Innovation Initiative, which connects Fresno State, Cal Poly and other West Coast universities and industry members through over $26 million in USDA grants in recent years.
Prayitno is now evaluating the industry member responses to 22 educational topics in dairy processing for a report showing areas where training is strong or needs improvement.
Prayitno also assisted campus post-doctoral researcher Dr. Paulina Freire Vásconez at the Jordan Agricultural Research Center this year. They are working on a project to integrate sensors with machine learning software to create a better application for measuring cheese meltability since current tests are time-consuming and need to be more efficient.
With Prayitno’s added involvement with the campus Food Science and Culinology Club, Homecoming Student Committee and International Office, her resume has helped her receive a host of scholarships provided by the Ag One Foundation.
These scholarships have been critical to giving her the financial buffer to explore a host of extracurricular activities and maintain a busy schedule that maximizes her professional development and consider a host of career directions.
“I’m really interested in dairy science research, and I am applying for master’s degree programs,” Prayitno said. “The dairy food and processing industry is so large, and my experience at Fresno State continues to open new doors for me every year.”
Fresno State’s annual 24-hour, online Day of Giving will be Wednesday, March 26. The College of Science and Mathematics relies on private financial support, such as funds raised from the Day of Giving, to support experiential learning activities for students. Visit fresnostate.dayofgiving.edu to learn how to support the College of Science and Mathematics today.
