COMFOCUS has recently launched the Academic Training program, which is part of the project summer schools. The aim of Academic Training is to foster learning with COMFOCUS and demonstrate and disseminate harmonised measurements, protocols, datasets, as well as to study best practices in the field of food consumer science.

Topics of Academic Training include: general introduction to consumer science, hands-on training at food consumer science harmonised measurements, protocols and guidelines for use of infrastructures and dedicated installations. Furthermore, basic insight in data models and methods of creating meta data, use of guidelines, raw data acquisition and processing (data) pipelines.

This online training session was held online on November 20, 2023. Besides an online event, the project is also going to organise a couple of face-to-face events in different European cities. The first one will take place in Ljubljana (Slovenia) in February – March, 2024!

This workshop, titled “Why We Eat What We Eat: Better Understanding of Healthy Eating Patterns in Practice,” took place in Belgrade on November 13, 2023. The overarching theme aimed at advancing food consumer science through harmonization, data integration, and collaboration.

The program started with a welcoming address. Ellen van Kleef delivered a presentation on the harmonization of self-report measures, examining the reasons for harmonization and its impact on research quality and scientific creativity. Subsequently, participants engaged in a discussion to share their perspectives on the harmonization of self-report measures. Mainly, benefits such as the importance for research outcome comparability, prevention of research waste, and the necessity of linking data were highlighted. Drawbacks included difficulty in implementation, the need for robust governance mechanisms, time consumption, and challenges in harmonization.

Harold Bult then explored the opportunities and challenges associated with physio-physical measures for understanding eating behaviour and data integration. By casting their votes and sharing their opinions, the emphasis was placed on the practical implementation of physio-physical measures. The majority of participants expressed interest in including more implicit measures in their research, particularly in EEG measures and pupil size measures. Challenges preventing their use included a lack of knowledge on psychophysiology, complex measures, and difficulties in harmonizing results.

Following this, Lada Timotijevic discussed the principles of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI).  After that, participants delved into essential aspects of responsible and transparent research concerning data derived from a dating app. Although not a typical research topic in the field, the discussion provided a fresh perspective on how individuals view the use of their personal data as participants on platforms, shedding light on concerns such as selling data to large companies or specific research questions. The importance of considering the user’s perspective and potential reuse in later stages was emphasized for researchers.

The workshop concluded with a brief plenary discussion, allowing participants to share insights and wrap up the workshop.

COMFOCUS is continually working on Open Call 2 that gives an opportunity for early career researchers to visit a food consumer science institute in Europe and conduct research there using emerging technologies. 61 applicants from 28 countries were already selected and are ready to go to the nine institutes and start first experiments!

In order to strengthen cooperation with the selected applicants and start building a food consumer science community, COMFOCUS launched a community event on October, 30, 2023!

Consortium members, as well as International Advisory Board (IAB), stakeholders and selected applicants participated in the event and got an overview of the last months’ work, shared by the COMFOCUS project members Machiel Reinders (Project Coordinator), Hans van Trijp (Scientific Coordinator), Ellen van Kleef (Professor of Wageningen University), Elena Horska (Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Agriculture at the University of Nitra), Violeta Stancu (Aarhus University) and a member of the International Advisory Board (IAB) Silvain Deplanque, who talked about the importance of COMFOCUS in today’s science.

Interesting discussions in five breakout rooms on different emerging technologies, led by the consortium members, aimed at identifying the specific values each emerging technology can bring to the participants’ research.

• There was a plea made to bring more structure to the field. Of course, it is important to let 1000 flowers blossom, but as a field there is a need for structure, such that learning from each other and leveraging each other’s data and results is further optimised. That is in line with the COMFOCUS philosophy of making data FAIR to ensure effective learning at higher scale and level. However, it is also clear that this thinking is not yet mainstream, also not in this domain. To many there seems an almost instant association with data harmonization and data sharing in terms of “limiting creativity and innovation” and ”privacy and ownership issues”. But the impression is also that the field is moving in that direction of more harmonization and data integration interest, and has progressed since the former conference.
• There is a growing stream of researchers with substantial interest in integrating and exploiting data sets through the use of digital technology, with presentation on AI and VR/ER, but also on machine learning and complex modelling and applying natural language processing tools for sensory and consumer data.
• Particularly interesting was a dedicated workshop on “How to leverage digitalization in sensory science for value creation”. This session brought together various of the thought leaders in this subdomain, including companies and universities (among whom Betina Piqueras from COMFOCUS/WUR). Betina briefly presented the COMFOCUS approach as part of how education can anticipate on these developments.