Young Hopes 2023 – A Workshop on Intellectual Property, Knowledge Transfer, and Utilizing Research and Innovation Results

FoodTraNet ESRs attended this workshop both online and in person, on November 28, 2023 at the Jožef Stefan Institute. The workshop focused around intellectual property, knowledge transfer and exploitation of research and innovation results. Key topics include understanding and protecting intellectual property, funding innovation cycles from idea to product, building partnerships, and exploring INDUSAC project opportunities for students and researchers. It also covers creating business models for start-ups or spin-outs, formulating cost structures for profit maximization, and effectively communicating an innovation's value proposition.

Conference on Environmental & Food Monitoring

At the International Conference on Environmental & Food Monitoring (ISEAC-41), our Zoe Giannioti gave an oral presentation on "Organic Authentication of Wheat and Derived Products via Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis, Residues & Mycotoxin Levels". Her topic highlights the necessity to develop analytical techniques that aid in safeguarding the integrity of our food supply.

Specifically, Zoe elucidated her research with stable isotope ratio analysis on organic and conventional wheat samples, after having assessed their differences in pesticide residues and mycotoxin content. Furthermore, Zoe investigated the effects of wheat processing on these factors, by examining samples of biscuits, crackers and pasta derived from the initial wheat samples. This study was carried out in collaboration with Barilla, Foodtranet's industrial partner, and the manufacturing of these products took place in the pilot plants of the company in Parma, Italy.

MSCA Coordinators Info Day

At the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) Coordinators Info Day held on November 9, 2023, in Brussels, three selected MSCA ITN projects—EuPRAXIA-DN, FoodTraNet, and PERSEPHONe—showcased their experiences in fostering synergies with other projects and initiatives. Nives Ogrinc, coordinator of FoodTraNet, provided insightful perspectives on the project's experiences in synergies with other ongoing projects, as well as engaging with industry stakeholders.

A video of the MSCA Coordinators Info Day can be found on YouTube.

FoodTraNet Workshop & Teambuilding: The Barilla experience

It is always exciting when ESRs have a teambuilding event. Last time it was a rafting trip in Slovenia and this time it is an exceptional experience atBarilla in Parma, Italy.

Click here to read the full article.

Mudita Vats presents at NMC

At Young NMC (Netherlands Metabolomics Centre), Mudita gave a talk on "MALDI-MSI of metabolites and lipids in grapevine leaves throughout their growth season". Her captivating talk was a standout, amidst a sea of clinical metabolomics presentations.

She offered a unique perspective as one of the few researchers specializing in imaging mass spectrometry on plants. She also relished the opportunity to connect with like-minded researchers passionate about plant metabolomics. The symposium was filled with exciting moments, including captivating posters and an enlightening lab tour at Radboud UMC.

Nayyer Rehman - Pills as podcasts

Introducing ‘Pills as Podcasts’, a mini-series presented by FoodTraNet's Industrial Liaison Group. Listen to our dynamic partners from Italy, Germany, Slovenia, and the UK as they briefly discuss their career journeys and the impact of science and technological advancement in their work.

Click here to listen to the podcasts.

2nd FoodTraNet Summer School -Report!

Our ESR, Lidia Molina, reports on her recent experiences at the FoodTraNet summer school in Almeria, Spain.

Click here to read her article.

Polymers for a Safe and Sustainable Future -Announcment

Dear colleagues and friends, We are very proud and honoured to announce the international conference Polymers 2024—Polymers for a Safe and Sustainable Future, organized in collaboration with the MDPI open access journal Polymers, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, BIOMAC project, and Exelisis Co. The conference will be held in Athens, Greece, on May 28–31, 2024. We look forward to welcoming you in Athens!

Prof. Dr. Dimitrios Bikiaris, Prof. Dr. Konstantinos Triantafyllidis, and Dr. Ioanna Deligkiozi.
Polymers 2024 Chairs.

Go to the conference website here

FoodTraNet present to President of Slovenia

President of Slovenia, Nataša Pric Musar, visited the Bio-Integrated Photonics Lab at Jožef Stefan Institute. Matjaž Humar and Abdur Rehman Anwar presented some recent results under the project FoodTraNet. They showed a live demonstration of the photonic barcodes. There was also a short debate about the importance of novel methods for tracking quality and authenticity of various foods.

ESR 6 receives the best contribution award at the IPS conference

Cathrine Terro (ESR 6) received the best contribution award at the 15th Jožef Stefan Student (IPS) conference. The IPS Scientific committee evaluated abstracts, presentations and posters. Congratulations Cathrine!

The conference took place in Mekinje Monastery, Kamnik, Slovenia from 31st of May to 2nd of June 2023 under the title: "Turning problems into solutions." The conference included students of science, technology, engineering and other related fields from institutions in Slovenia and abroad.

JSI Open Day

On Saturday, 25 March 2023 the open days took place at the Jožef Stefan Institute (JSI). The event is open for general public interested in research activities on multidisciplinary fields of science.

Read about the event here.

Free webinar!

Make sure to attend this webinar given by Assist. prof. Tome Eftimov

Session 1 link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86759643811?pwd=YzZqU1Z2YmNWRWdWbmVoNkxhY05zdz09
Meeting ID: 867 5964 3811 Passcode: 083118

Session 2 link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83350460775?pwd=S3R6R3RqYTlkai9IQnBqYTY0QXA5UT09 Meeting ID: 833 5046 0775 Passcode: 479676

Opportunity to submit a paper to the JEEA Journal

There is an opportunity to submit a paper to the relatively new JEEA Journal in the areas of chemical contaminants in food. For more information, please read the flyer here.

Researcher Positions Open at FEM

Four temporary positions are available as Fourth Level researcher (R4) for up to 36 months or to the end of the project in the field of: applied biology, agricultural sciences, dairy sciences and microbiology, food chemistry, food science and technology, and consumer science. Application deadline February 19, 2023.

For more information, go to the FEM webpage here

Grant writing training at MSACL

Make sure to catch the workshop on Grant Writing for Beginners (Thu Feb 09, 2023) which will be moderated by ESR 3: Mudita Vats. The session will provide resources and insights on finding grant applications, hot topics to write on, quantity v/s quality of grants, general advice and much more.

Register to attend online using this link: here.

ISO-FOOD 2023 Call of Abstracts

This announcement is an open call for abstracts to the second ISO-FOOD conference that will be held in Hotel Bernardin, Portorož, Slovenia, from April 24-26, 2023.

For more information, read the flyer here or got to the conference website at www.isofood2023.si/

First FoodTraNet publications are out!

The New Year comes with new publications! 2023 seems to bring very promising outcomes for Foodtranet ESRs. Just before Christmas, Johan (ESR 12) and Athira (ESR 13) published a new paper in Macromol journal. The paper consists of a review of processing methods for packaging applications. They focused on active compounds which are incorporated in food packaging to improve their antibacterial and antioxidant properties link: https://www.mdpi.com/2673-6209/3/1/1.

Also, Athira published another review paper this January in Polymers. In this paper, Athira worked more in-depth on her PhD topic, which consists in evaluating different ways to incorporate these active agents into the different packaging materials (link: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4360/15/2/273). The topic that the two ESRs have been working on is very relevant nowadays since food packaging materials are part of our daily life and their management is crucial for protecting consumer’s health and the environment.

All publications can be found on our page here.

FoodTraNet's Iconic Team Building Weekend!

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much." – Helen Keller

The ESRs and the supervisors gathered in Bovec, Slovenia for a teambuilding weekend. The event started with all the ESRs receiving the special FoodTraNet hoodies and having a great Slovenian dinner reunion. Rafting was the teambuilding activity of choice as it is a perfect activity for helping a team to learn to work together, communicate clearly and effectively and most importantly, have fun together.

The day was followed by a set of interactive and competitive social activities; a scavenger hunt and a trivia quiz night. Despite the rain, the next day was well spent where everyone got the chance to explore the history of Kobarid town and its days during the World War I at the Kobarid Museum. All in all, a very successful, fun, and enriching teambuilding experience.

Our ESR Lidia Molina has written a blog on this and you can read it here.

Webinar on Scientific Writing

On October 13 our colleague Professor Adrian Covaci from the University of Antwerp will give a webinar, via Zoom, on tips for writing scientific literature, as well as the editorial process.

The Zoom link is here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83012742750?pwd=OVJNMktOMVFidXBMdFlOWW9XSXljZz09
The passcode is: 840319
We hope you find the webinar useful!

Mid-Term Check at M4i

All of the ESRs gathered again for the Mid-Term Check meeting that took place at the Maastricht MultiModal Molecular Imaging Institute – M4i. The meeting commenced with a warm welcome from Dr. Ron Heeren followed by an introduction to the meeting by the REA Project Officer and the project coordinator. This was followed by individual presentations given by each ESR about their research project progress and foreseen research. Also, a tour of the innovative M4i laboratories was given at the end of the day. The following day included a trip and a short hike around Domein Aldenborgh; a local Limburg winery in the village of Eys.

Our first newsletter is here!

After a slight delay in order to allow the first summer school to complete, our first newsletter is here. We have tried to keep it informal and focussed on the experiences of our ESRs within the project.

You can read it here (opens in pdf). We hope you enjoy!

First FoodTraNet training school held at FEM, Italy.

The FoodTraNet team outside FEM

The first of the three planned training schools occurred on June 22-24 2022 (see the agenda here). It was a 3-day course and held at Fondazione Edmund Mach in San Michele All'adige in Trento, Italy under the title of ˝Advanced approaches for food quality, authenticity and traceability˝. Presntations included developing edible barcodes, mass spectrometry imaging, and biostatistics and data. Training included sample preparation and traditional analytical procedures in stable isotope analysis, and introductions of biotechnology approaches for fermented food (cheese) innovation for food quality improvement.

The summer school included a field visit to the dairy-factory at Fondo and Trentingrana store at Segno guided by Dr. Nicola Cologna and Andrea Goss (CONCAST). The visit introduced us to the intricate techniques used in making and maintaining the Trentingrana which is an Italian Grana cheese that originates from Trento.

You can read more in our newsletter here.

Hurry! Sign up for free MetroFood online webinars.

The METROFOOD-PP webinar series will start the 7th of February 2022, for 8 Mondays till the 28th of March. Each Monday two or three webinars will be hold from 1:00 to 2:00 PM, 2:00 to 3:00 and 3:00 to 4:00 PM CET. Each webinar will last for 45 min (35 min presentation, 10 min discussion). More information and registration can be found at the MetroFood website here.

4th BVL/MRI course on Food Safety, Food Authenticity and Risk Management: 14–16 March 2022. Registration now open.

Registration is now open for our fourth international training course on food safety risk management, this time with a spotlight on food fraud and food authenticity. The training is free of charge and will be held virtually in March 2022 by the Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) in collaboration with the Federal Research Institute of Nutrition and Food (Max Rubner-Institut (MRI)).

To adapt the training times for participants from around the globe, it will offer the same training twice for three days each:

March 14 to 16, 2022; 14h00–20h00 UTC+1 each day (participants from western hemisphere)
March 17 to 19, 2022; 07h00–13h00 UTC+1 each day (participants from eastern hemisphere)

Registrations will be open until 31 January, 2022 . More information and registration can be found here.

< Source: BVL website >

FoodTraNet Kick-Off Meeting Held Virtually on 9-10 December 2021.

Between 9-10 December 2021, the kick-off meeting for the FoodTraNet team was held. Unfortuntely, because of on-going social and travel restrictions due to Covid, the meeting had to be held virtually. Despite this, a valuable and informative meeting was still achieved. Chaired by the project Coordinator, Prof. Nives Ogrinc, presentations from each of the Work Package leads and from each of the Early Stage Researchers were given. You can view the individual ESR presentations on our new YouTube channel here or on the ESR Profile page.

Thank you to all involved in organising and participating in this excellent meeting.

Call for papers: 8th Conference of Metrologia. 01-02 July 2022, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece.

The 8th Metrology Conference, aspires to set the stage for distinguished and excelling scientists in Greece and abroad to exchange and share their experiences and research results in all aspects of Metrology, acting as a springboard for the upgrading of national & European laboratory and metrological infrastructure. At the same time, the conference aims to provide an opportunity for young researchers to present their work, for students to submit their first thesis, as well as for colleagues to put forward their concerns and suggestions as for any improvement of the subject of Metrology. The primary aim of the conference is to stimulate fruitful discussion and build bridges of communication and cooperation among academia, industry and governmental authorities, through inter- and trans-disciplinary networking. It will provide a unique international forum for exchanging state-of-the-art information and knowledge sharing. The deadline for abstract submissions is 31 December. You can read the conferenece flyer for more information here.

Fake Food: Isotopic Analysis Helps Identify Fraudulent Truffles

Tuber magnatum or "European white truffles" can be the most expensive food on earth per kilogramme (Photo: Evan Sung).

Up to 200,000 euros a kilogramme – no wonder white truffles tempt fraudsters. These mushrooms are tasty, nutritious and very rare – a combination that arguably makes them the most expensive food in the world by weight.

This article by our Advisory Board partner IAEA, featuring work from the Josef Stefan Institute, explores the use of Isotopic Analysis to detect fraud in truffles. Read it here.

New Metro Food Video Available

Our friends at the Metro Food project, which is based around high-level metrology services in food and nutrition for the enhancement of food quality and safety, has just released a very neat informational video giving more details about their work. Please go here to watch this video and please feel free to explore their website for further information.