USU Dairy Scientist Receives John & Olga Gardner Prize

When Associate Professor Prateek Sharma was in 12th grade, he already had a passion for mathematics, chemistry and especially physics, which made taking the exam for engineering college an easy choice. However, he also took the exam for dairy technology. While he wasn’t familiar with the field, he had agricultural experience from growing up on his family’s farm, and students from the program emerged with a bachelor of technology degree, a very competitive credential in India.

Sharma excelled at both exams. Thinking that the B.Tech program would basically just be engineering in a dairy setting, he went with the latter.

Dairy technology, it turns out, is not just engineering with cows.

“In the first semester, there were lots of courses in engineering, chemistry, mathematics and things like that, and I was fascinated,” Sharma said. “But then suddenly I was in microbiology and biochemistry classes, which were not my topic. So I would say I got into this accidentally, honestly.”

Fortunately, that accident led to a decades-long career that took Sharma across four continents and to some of the most cutting-edge universities and companies in the world. And at the 2026 Annual Conference of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, Sharma received the John and Olga Gardner Prize for important contributions to the sciences. The award came with $2,500.

Today, Sharma is the director of the Western Dairy Center and has his own laboratory in the basement of the Nutrition and Food Science Building. There’s an expansive walk-in freezer full of dairy, an ever-growing number of students and staff, and ongoing projects ranging from a dairy substitute for gelatin and corn syrup to cheese that pulls away from paper more cleanly. But the path to getting there was long, and according to Sharma, it required more than a little luck and hard work.

The latter took the form of a master of science in dairy technology at India’s prestigious National Dairy Research Institute followed by another in food science, technology, and nutrition at the Dublin Institute of Technology. He gained an internship at Irish dairy company Glanbia before gaining a job with Irish dairy cooperative Dairygold. He then set his mind toward a new goal: academia, also at the National Dairy Research Institute. Subsequently, his doctorate took him to Massey University in New Zealand, where he studied under Professor Peter Munro.

“He was the head of research and development at Fonterra before he came to Massey University full time, and I was his only Ph.D. student, so I got plenty of time from him. I tried to learn as much as I could from him, not only in terms of dairy science, but also human relations, soft skills and ethics.” Sharma said. “He was one of the best scientists, but very modest, down-to-earth, easily accessible and he treated me very respectfully. I was his last student before he retired, and I was lucky to have a great mentor.”

Sharma had a similar experience when he came to USU and met Professor Donald McMahon, the previous director of the Western Dairy Center. Sharma had encountered McMahon’s research numerous times in his education, so he was excited to meet him. He was pleasantly surprised when he proved to be the same caliber of person as Munro.

“He’s such a modest person,” Sharma said. “That inspired me a lot. In a sense, he was taller than me in knowledge and rank, yet anyone could access him. That was also true of many of my professors in India, who were very pragmatic, progressive, upright and honest.”

That willingness to share knowledge is a critical component in the success of the next generation of scientists, Sharma said.

“Intelligence can take you some of the way, but it cannot take you further,” he said. “The actual elevation starts when you talk to other people and realize how little you know. The spirit I want to have involves acknowledging other people’s ideas and recognizing that whatever I know may be good, but I still probably know very little, and I need more. I want to keep that hunger alive and pass it on to my students and my kids. You know, if they don’t win an award, that’s not a problem, but if they win one and become arrogant, that’s a huge problem.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the number of people Sharma wished to thank for their part in his award was large, including professional mentors such as Munro and McMahon; Professor Emeritus Allen Foegeding at North Carolina State University; Professor Jason Stokes at the University of Queensland; Eric Bastian, who was also a previous director of the Western Dairy Center; Professor Ken White, the former dean of the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences; Professor Heidi Wengreen, head of the Department of Nutrition, Dietetics, and Food Sciences; and his colleagues, students, and postdoctoral researchers.

He also thanked his family, including his parents, brother, wife and two children.

“My parents gave me my values during my childhood,” Sharma said. “And I cannot be successful here working from 9 o’clock to 5 o'clock without my family. Professors carry their projects and students with them like baggage, so we’re not always able to give quality time to our loved ones. Sometimes, they sacrifice a lot for us. My wife cooks my lunch every morning, and without that, I cannot use my mind. She takes care of the children while asking for limited help, and that makes my success possible. This award is the result of input from so many people, and I’m just the manifestation of that.”

Finally, he thanked the Gardner family for creating the award.

“They instituted this award back in the ’40s,” Sharma said, “back when doctorates and professorships weren’t so popular in Utah. They knew we needed smart people to train our students, and that was visionary. And a professor who gets this award has a moment to really introspect on what more they can do for students and Utah, and to realize that they have even more responsibility after being recognized. So I’m really grateful to the Gardner family for providing me that valuable moment.”