6 May 2014
The 2nd Nursten Flavour Symposium, held at Nottingham on 28-29 April 2014, welcomed students from Northumbria, Reading, Nottingham and Dublin. The two-day event, named in honour of Prof Harry Nursten, encourages food science and sensory students from around the country to present their results and share ideas.
This year welcomed back food science students from past years who came to share their experiences - Lewis Jones from Mars shared his insights into thermal processing flavours in chocolate flavours and cat food (but not together!), Becki Clarke shared how her career path and successes in sensory science had evolved following her dream to be a wine taster at the age of 12, and May Ng dazzled us with her research findings based on conceptualisation and product insights.
These talks were interspersed with student presentations, spanning a range of subjects from fish-smelling gels to volatiles produced by brewing yeast, and SCI, together with RSC, awarded prizes for the best oral presentations. The second prize went to Ashleigh Stewart who gave a talk on 'Investigating the Maillard reaction of milk powder in a low-moisture system'.
The first prize went to Qian Yang who gave an excellent talk on 'Individual variation in perception: relative effects of PROP and taster status'. Both winners were also given free one-year SCI student membership and were invited to join the committee via the Food Group's Young Ambassador Scheme.
The day session finished with an interactive beer and food matching session for the students, led by Dr Rachel Edwards- Stuart, before convening at the Orchard Hotel, in the University's main campus, for dinner.
Day two was held at Sutton Bonington Campus, where 15 students presented their posters, followed by tours of the campus and research facilities.
The prize for the best poster presentation was awarded by the IFST and went to Martha Skinner. The British Society of Flavourists awarded the best overall presentation (poster and oral) to Irene Peinado Pardo.
Dr Rachel Edwards-Stuart
on behalf of the Food Group