The Food and Health Network had its official launch at IFR in July, at an event 'Bridging the Gap' that attracted more than seventy attendees
The event included eleven presentations from IFR scientists and speakers from the food manufacturing sector, the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), and the Food Standards Agency.
The launch was a major advance in what we hope will be a step change in relationships between IFR and its industrial partners.
We all know that there is a diversity of approach between academia and industry, and that in the past this has presented a barrier to effective development of technology.
To help solve this problem, the network seeks to capitalise on these differences, to draw strength and seek new perspectives and approaches from the combination of academic and industrial expertise.
The concept of the network is to take academic scientific insight and combine it with technical and commercial excellence in order to develop new and exciting solutions to real problems.
These new solutions will be generated by: listening to people who know their businesses better than we do; applying our science, which we know better than anyone; defining where this science goes next through collaborative research projects.
The launch day 'Bridging the Gap' is the issue that the Network and its Expertise Clusters were set up to address, in an openly collaborative forum between IFR and Industry.
The Network provides the opportunity for Food Industry professionals to hear about current developments in food science.
This will be provided by the Network's website and newsletters (the first edition of FHN Brief is available now), together with a series of seminars on topics of general relevance.
Members will also be able to hear about IFR's work through informal discussions with our scientists.
The Expertise Clusters are an additional means of bringing together industry and science to focus on particular issues in an in-depth way.
