There is a strong and increasing interest in the relationship between food consumption, public health, well-being, healthy ageing and more general aspects such as sustainability and resource efficiency; so much so that developments in these food research areas have been included as a bio-based technology component of the Priority “Societal Challenges” platform within the EU’s Horizon 2020 vision documents. All the above topics will be the subject of plenary lectures, research papers and discussions at the next EFFoST Annual Meeting to be held in Bologna, Italy, from 12th-15th November, 2013.

The conference programme will be focused on two topic streams, one addressing bio-based scientific approaches for food-human wellbeing interaction, and the other relating more specifically to bio-based technologies for industry competitiveness.
To read the Conference Chair’s Welcome Address please click here.

This is a significant opportunity for you to join leaders and students from industry and academia to debate these new challenges and for you to network with your international colleagues.
The conference will address the following themes:

I. Consumer well-being
a. Diet-host interaction: biotech / metabolomic approaches
Gut microflora / food design relationship
Safety aspect of food associated microorganisms
Molecular determinants / food formulation
Probiotics from genomics to functionality

b. Diet and physical activity
Level of physical activity and diet needs & interaction
High level
Intermediate
Low – sedentary

c. Healthy ageing

II. Industry competitiveness
a. Technology innovation by omic approaches / bioprocesses
Enzymes & biocatalysis
Biomasses & biopolymers
Process ecology / sustainability
Biorefinery

b. Bio-based analytical approaches for food quality

Metabolomic and food characterization
Genuinity / authenticity / adulteration
Structural proteomic
Genomic and metagenomic in evaluation of food safety