"Good food technologies are vitally important in today's world": this was the message given to young up-and-coming scientists by Volker Heinz, Head of the German Institute of Food Technology (DIL) in Quakenbrück. 13 PhD candidates from across Europe were guests in the Artland for two days. They presented their research work from the area of food processing at the „European Workshop on Food Engineering and Technology“.

In German, this roughly means "food technology and process engineering" It is the eighth time that the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) and the European Federation for Food Science and Technology (EFFOST) have organised this meeting for young scientists from across Europe, who are dealing with topics from the area of food processing in their doctoral theses.  This year the host is DIL in Quakenbrück, sponsor of the food group Nestlé.

Emna Chichti from France said at the DIL meeting:"I like the workshop so much because we are a small group. Instead of just listening to lectures, we can exchange information on our work and get to know PhD candidates from other countries". The workshop is organised in such a way that each participant can present his or her research work to other young scientists from France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Great Britain and Israel.

During the presentations it becomes clear that food processing is a broadly-based area of research. "Our topics differ, everyone has his or her own research focus", stated Erika Georget, who is conducting her PhD work at DIL. In contrast to large conferences, it was possible to discuss the input more intensively afterwards. Alexander Mathys from DIL Quakenbrück, organiser of the on-site workshop, also finds that "networking" is the most important aspect of the workshop.

The workshop ends with the conferral of the "Julius Maggi Research Award", endowed with 2,500 Euro. Referring to the Swiss Julius Maggi (1846-1912), the inventor of the famous brown Maggi seasoning, a jury comprised of DIL Head Volker Heinz, Dietrich Knorr (Technical University Berlin) and Ulrich Bobe (Nestlé) selected the best presentations. The winner of the Maggi Award is David Lloyd from the University of Birmingham. Erika Georget (Leibniz University Hannover, DIL) and Delphine Huc (AgroParisTech, Massy) were also honoured.

Source: Lena Stangenberg (Bersenbrück District Newspaper)