Howdy! My name is Seth Yoder, and I am passionate about food chemistry, food safety, and human nutrition.

I grew up in Azle, Texas. I am not sure what to say about Azle. There wasn’t much to do in that town and exciting events were rare, aside from the annual floods and tornadoes, but it is my home. I taught myself to play guitar and drums to pass the time. I also played tenor and baritone saxophone in school. I played in the marching band and the jazz band, and while I was certainly no Coltrane or Parker, it was a fun hobby.

After graduating high school I met a great gal named Cassandra. In 2007 we decided to move to Colorado to pursue our undergraduate degrees. I started a rock band with a group of really talented guys, and we called ourselves Tony G and the Cure for Cancer. I enrolled in Colorado State University where I worked as an undergraduate research assistant for Dr. John McKay, a plant evolutionary biologist. I logged so many hours crossing strains of Arabidopsis thaliana I can do it in my sleep. I earned my bachelor’s degree in Food Science from Colorado State University in 2010.

Cassandra and I decided to move to Seattle so I could enroll in graduate school at the University of Washington. I conducted my thesis research with Dr. Johanna Lampe at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. I investigated the metabolism of plant lignans by human gut bacteria. What are lignans? I could talk to you for hours about lignans, but the Linus Pauling Institute has a good primer on the subject.

I recently graduated from UW, obtaining my M.S. from the Nutritional Sciences program. Since graduating I have started Buddy Engineer with my friend Alex. Buddy Engineer is a small business focused on providing multidisciplinary research techniques and designing customized research prototypes. Check out the Video page for more info.

If you’d like to contact me the best way is probably via email

sethyoder[at]gmail[dot]com