Even while he was busy as department head and dean, Prescott continued working on research beneficial to the growth of food technology from 1921 to 1942. This would include research into coffee from 1923 to 1937 and would include future Nobel Laureate Robert Burns Woodward when Woodward was a graduate student at MIT. He also worked on research in citric acid fermentation, refrigerated and frozen foods, and was instrumental in starting a new scientific journal named "Food Research" in 1936 ("Journal of Food Science" since 1961). By this time, the need for a conference dealing with the growth of food technology and a possible society to be created was in process. As food technology grew from the individual family farm to the factory level, including the slaughterhouse for meat and poultry processing, the cannery for canned foods, and bakeries for bread as examples, the need to have personnel trained for the food industries. Literature such as Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" in 1906 about slaughterhouse operations would be a factor in the establishment of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) later that year. The United States Department of Agriculture was also interested in food technology and research was also being done at agricultural colleges in the United States, including MIT, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the University of California, Berkeley. By 1935, both Prescott and Proctor (now on the MIT faculty) decided that it was time to hold an international conference regarding this. A detailed proposal was presented to MIT President Compton in 1936 was presented with $1500 of financial aid from MIT for a meeting to be held from June 30 – July 2, 1937, with Compton asking how many people would be in attendance at this meeting. Prescott replied with "fifty or sixty people." 500 people actually attended the event. This meeting proved so successful that in early 1938 that a second conference would be held in 1939. Initially led by George J. Hucker of the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station (part of Cornell University) in Geneva, New York, a small group meeting was held on August 5, 1938, on forming an organization with an expanded group meeting in New York City on January 16, 1939, to further discuss this. The second conference was held at MIT June 29 to July 1, 1939, with Proctor as conference chair. 600 people attended this event. At the final session, the chairman of the session Fred C. Blanck of the United States Department of Agriculture, proposed that an organization be established as the Institute of Food Technologists.