Call for Papers

Please contact the symposium organizers with questions.

As the global population rises alongside a worsening climate outlook, alternative strategies to mitigate and reduce the negative effects of animal agriculture are needed. Alternative proteins such as plant and cell-based meat provide exciting avenues for meeting the increasing demand for meat sourced from animals and have implications for planetary and human health. The creation of new food technologies which are appetizing, affordable, and scalable enough to shift towards alternative food sources requires significant scientific efforts and investment. While food science is a well-established field with a rich history, inclusion of methods and research paradigms from the materials community can accelerate the development of promising food technologies. Engineering these new technologies requires a deeper understanding of functional plant-sourced ingredients, relationships between processing and material structure, biomaterial development, and methods for prolonging food longevity. In this symposium, we bring together industry and academic leaders from across disciplines to discuss applications of chemistry, engineering, and materials science towards the advanced food technologies.

Topics will include:

• Hydrocolloids and food microstructures
• Methodologies for characterization, modeling, and discovery in food science
• Protein polysaccharide interactions
• Biomimetic and bio-inspired systems
• Reversible gelation, temperature-dependent gelation
• Structured lipids and oleogels
• Flavor compounds, natural pigments and oxidative properties, and analytical chemistry
• Processing and applications of novel ingredients
• Biomaterial mimicry, biopolymer processing and properties
• Packaging, longevity, shelf-life, and food quality preservation and monitoring
• AI and machine learning for food development
• Biofabrication
• Tissue engineering and scaffold materials

Invited Speakers (tentative):

• Ester Caffarel (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
• Laura Domigan (The University of Auckland, New Zealand)
• David Kaplan (Tufts University, USA)
• Jess Krieger (Ohayo Valley, USA)
• Kent Leach (University of California, Davis, USA)
• Alejandro Marangoni (University of Guelph, Canada)
• Benedetto Marelli (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
• Mark Miodownik (University College London, United Kingdom)
• Fiorenzo Omenetto (Tufts University, USA)
• Vayu Maini Rekdal (University of California, Berkeley)
• Begoña Ruiz (AINIA, Spain)
• Karin Schroen (Wageningen University, Netherlands)

Symposium Organizers