News & Events
What's happening in the SFN...
News & Events:
STFC Food Network+ Showcase
16th and 17th January 2019
Earlier this year we awarded funding for >20 collaborative scoping projects involving direct partnerships between researchers in the STFC Physics and AgriFood communities. One of the main reasons we funded these projects is because we believe they have great potential to use the innovative new connections to make an impact. We are holding a 2 day meeting at the STFC Harwell Campus with expert speakers and potential funders to showcase these projects and provide space to brainstorm potential new project ideas using STFC capabilities. This meeting will take place on the 16th and 17th January 2019 at the Harwell Visitors Centre - you can see our agenda here. Registration for this event has now closed.
Shocks in Food Products - Review
One of our scoping award projects has completed a review of the work they have undertaken exploring novel techniques to assess food price shocks. Aled Jones from Anglia Ruskin University and Valeria Shumaylova from the University of Cambridge discuss how food systems represent a significant risk to financial and political
stability in a number of regions around the world in this paper
16th and 17th January 2019
Earlier this year we awarded funding for >20 collaborative scoping projects involving direct partnerships between researchers in the STFC Physics and AgriFood communities. One of the main reasons we funded these projects is because we believe they have great potential to use the innovative new connections to make an impact. We are holding a 2 day meeting at the STFC Harwell Campus with expert speakers and potential funders to showcase these projects and provide space to brainstorm potential new project ideas using STFC capabilities. This meeting will take place on the 16th and 17th January 2019 at the Harwell Visitors Centre - you can see our agenda here. Registration for this event has now closed.
Shocks in Food Products - Review
One of our scoping award projects has completed a review of the work they have undertaken exploring novel techniques to assess food price shocks. Aled Jones from Anglia Ruskin University and Valeria Shumaylova from the University of Cambridge discuss how food systems represent a significant risk to financial and political
stability in a number of regions around the world in this paper
STFC B4I Roadshow for Agri/Food/Drink Sector
STFC are holding this event to target people interested in these themes at Harper Adams University on the 14th November. The event offers companies who need to overcome problems that restrict their productivity and competitiveness, an opportunity to discuss their issues with world leading experts and learn how to access some of the £8M in funding available to this programme. STFC funds and operates a number of large science facilities offering research and development access to commercial users and can provide access to advanced experimental and computational tools to address challenges in all aspects of the food production and packaging supply chain.
If you work for or with industry then please come along to:
Find out more and register to attend here
STFC are holding this event to target people interested in these themes at Harper Adams University on the 14th November. The event offers companies who need to overcome problems that restrict their productivity and competitiveness, an opportunity to discuss their issues with world leading experts and learn how to access some of the £8M in funding available to this programme. STFC funds and operates a number of large science facilities offering research and development access to commercial users and can provide access to advanced experimental and computational tools to address challenges in all aspects of the food production and packaging supply chain.
If you work for or with industry then please come along to:
- Learn about funding opportunities
- Talk to the coordinators of the B4I funding scheme
- Discus your challenge with world leading scientists
- Identify potential projects with STFC experts
- Understand how to access leading edge research infrastructure
- Partake in the facility tour at Harper Adams University, including the Dairy Crest Innovation Centre, Poultry and crop and environment research centres.
- Network with other agri-food companies
Find out more and register to attend here
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Commercial UAV Conference - 14th and 15th November 2018
The SFN will be attending this event investigating new applications and opportunities for UAVs at the Excel in London from 14-15 November 2018. We are pleased to announce that we have two of our scoping award winners speaking at the conference:
Come and visit STFC and the STFC Food Network+ at the Commercial UAV Conference – Stand No. 100. You can find out more and register to attend here |
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SFN Scoping award winner Dr Niamh Forde to speak at the Department for International Trade - Game Changing Technologies in Agriculture event 2018
We are delighted to confirm that SFN Scoping Award winner Niamh Forde has been selected to speak about her scoping project 'Combining IR and pattern recognition to enhance pregnancy success in cattle: Sensing well done steak' at this event on the 11th October . The SFN will also have a stand at this event focusing on innovative technologies being developed and applied in agriculture.
We are delighted to confirm that SFN Scoping Award winner Niamh Forde has been selected to speak about her scoping project 'Combining IR and pattern recognition to enhance pregnancy success in cattle: Sensing well done steak' at this event on the 11th October . The SFN will also have a stand at this event focusing on innovative technologies being developed and applied in agriculture.
Internet of Food Things Network+
Professor Simon Pearson (SFN Champion for Sustainable Food Production) has recently been awarded a £1.14 million grant from EPSRC to lead The Internet of Food Things (IoFT) Network Plus in order to help nurture and grow the UK’s food manufacturing digital economy. The project will run from May 2018 until May 2021 and will be led by Simon at the University of Lincoln.
The Network brings together data and computer scientists, chemists, and economists to investigate how artificial intelligence, data analytics and emerging technologies can enhance the digitalisation of the UK food supply chain. The network is examining the application of the IoT in connected homes of the future, the traceability of food, and how machine learning and artificial intelligence can be utilised to extract value from the vast amounts of data available across the whole food supply chain, improving efficiency and reducing food waste. The overarching perspective of the multi-disciplinary Network is on the societal impact of all of these transformational technologies.
They will host one main conference per year and in addition 3 facilitated workshops each year to deep dive key questions within the digital food domain. Pilot studies and detailed reviews will be commissioned to underpin horizon scanning perspectives. The launch event on the 21st September in London will kick-start the activities of the Network by bringing the founding academic and partners together, with many others from across academia, business and various policy-making bodies including Government departments, all with a common shared awareness of the pressing challenges surrounding the food manufacturing chain and the role that new technologies can play in addressing them. You can register to attend the launch meeting here and find out more details about the network here
We anticipate many cross-overs in the interests of the members of this network with those of the SFN and would like to encourage you to sign up to their mailing list to find out their latest updates and opportunities
Professor Simon Pearson (SFN Champion for Sustainable Food Production) has recently been awarded a £1.14 million grant from EPSRC to lead The Internet of Food Things (IoFT) Network Plus in order to help nurture and grow the UK’s food manufacturing digital economy. The project will run from May 2018 until May 2021 and will be led by Simon at the University of Lincoln.
The Network brings together data and computer scientists, chemists, and economists to investigate how artificial intelligence, data analytics and emerging technologies can enhance the digitalisation of the UK food supply chain. The network is examining the application of the IoT in connected homes of the future, the traceability of food, and how machine learning and artificial intelligence can be utilised to extract value from the vast amounts of data available across the whole food supply chain, improving efficiency and reducing food waste. The overarching perspective of the multi-disciplinary Network is on the societal impact of all of these transformational technologies.
They will host one main conference per year and in addition 3 facilitated workshops each year to deep dive key questions within the digital food domain. Pilot studies and detailed reviews will be commissioned to underpin horizon scanning perspectives. The launch event on the 21st September in London will kick-start the activities of the Network by bringing the founding academic and partners together, with many others from across academia, business and various policy-making bodies including Government departments, all with a common shared awareness of the pressing challenges surrounding the food manufacturing chain and the role that new technologies can play in addressing them. You can register to attend the launch meeting here and find out more details about the network here
We anticipate many cross-overs in the interests of the members of this network with those of the SFN and would like to encourage you to sign up to their mailing list to find out their latest updates and opportunities
Annual Meeting - June 2018
We recently held our second annual meeting at Inox in the Students Union Building at the University of Sheffield. As well as keynote talks and breakouts, we heard updates from the 20+ projects funded by the SFN, and provided space for free-form discussion time to progress new collaboration ideas, hold hackevents, and to allow time for working on existing projects. You can find out more on our Annual Meetings page
We recently held our second annual meeting at Inox in the Students Union Building at the University of Sheffield. As well as keynote talks and breakouts, we heard updates from the 20+ projects funded by the SFN, and provided space for free-form discussion time to progress new collaboration ideas, hold hackevents, and to allow time for working on existing projects. You can find out more on our Annual Meetings page
Additional £100k Awarded to SFN from STFC
We are delighted to announce that the STFC have awarded our Network an additional £100k to be used to help us fund more Scoping Funding projects from our latest call. We received an impressive 34 applications to this call and will soon be able to announce details of all those that we have awarded.
Sandpit Winners Announced
Congratulations to the two winning projects awarded at our Sandpit events in February:
Agri-Food UK Landscape
Find out more about the Agri-Food UK Landscape and see how the SFN fits in as a nationwide network here
SFN Handbook now available for viewing
We have been working hard with our Champions and CoIs to put together our 'Newcomer's Guide to the STFC Food Network+'. We'll be officially launching this later on in the year but you can see our current version here:
We are delighted to announce that the STFC have awarded our Network an additional £100k to be used to help us fund more Scoping Funding projects from our latest call. We received an impressive 34 applications to this call and will soon be able to announce details of all those that we have awarded.
Sandpit Winners Announced
Congratulations to the two winning projects awarded at our Sandpit events in February:
- Project APROV - Augmented Procurement Visibility - Developing the self organising capability of agricultural procurement systems
- Continuous Ammonia Monitoring for AGriculture - CAMAG
Agri-Food UK Landscape
Find out more about the Agri-Food UK Landscape and see how the SFN fits in as a nationwide network here
SFN Handbook now available for viewing
We have been working hard with our Champions and CoIs to put together our 'Newcomer's Guide to the STFC Food Network+'. We'll be officially launching this later on in the year but you can see our current version here:
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Collaborative Scoping Projects
We are pleased to announce that we will opening a call for collaborative scoping projects for <8k early in 2018, to close on 6th March. This call is open to all projects that bring together STFC capabilities and food research and industry, including topics that aren’t covered by the sandpits. A full application form will be supplied when we announce the call but, to help you start preparing, you can see the information we'll be looking for on our funding page.
Article on SFN in latest edition of The journal of the Institute of Food Science and Technology
Professor Sarah Bridle, describes the launch of the Network and its ambitions to apply the skills and facilities of the Science and Technology Facilities Council to tackling the challenges facing food supply. You can read the article here
SFN Sandpits scheduled for early 2018
After a fantastic response to our survey we've decided to go ahead with 2 sandpits as follows:
The deadline for applications has now passed and we will be announcing the successful applicants soon. Please see our funding page for more details.
SFN Visit to Harwell
On 28th September we ran an STFC Food Network+ (SFN) visit to the STFC Harwell Campus. About 45 people attended, including more than 10 from industry (Pepsico, Mondelez, Unilever). In the morning we had talks introducing food challenges to STFC researchers (Tim Williams, Ian Noble, Jason Halford) and talks about STFC Facilities aimed at food research and industry (Sarah Rogers on ISIS, Tony Parker on CLF, Claire Pizzey on Diamond and Brian Matthews on the Scientific Computing Department). We had excellent feedback from the multiway speed meeting after lunch. Katharine Hollinshead (from STFC) and Harriet Trewin (from BBSRC) gave talks on funding opportunities after lunch, including a new announcement that STFC will contribute to the new BBSRC funding call on precision agriculture technology for the field. We had a brainstorming session on how the STFC Facilities could contribute to food challenges. We are working through the many ideas that came out of that - example highlights for sustainable production include detailed imaging of the root soil interface, imaging reactions to understand the effect of activars/ inhibitors and functional genomics. The food supply chain could benefit from STFC facilities in assessing food safety and adulteration, developing new resilient materials and packaging, developing tools for quality assurance in manufacturing and fundamental study of food solvent interactions. Finally consumer nutrition could benefit from STFC facilities via understanding the bioavailability of nutrients and study of digestion and absorption and point of use testing devices for nutrition. In addition most areas could benefit from using STFC data science and computing capabilities to collate and analyse large quantities of data. Due to popular demand we will organise a future larger visit offering a tour.
You can see the slides from the days excellent presentations here:
We are pleased to announce that we will opening a call for collaborative scoping projects for <8k early in 2018, to close on 6th March. This call is open to all projects that bring together STFC capabilities and food research and industry, including topics that aren’t covered by the sandpits. A full application form will be supplied when we announce the call but, to help you start preparing, you can see the information we'll be looking for on our funding page.
Article on SFN in latest edition of The journal of the Institute of Food Science and Technology
Professor Sarah Bridle, describes the launch of the Network and its ambitions to apply the skills and facilities of the Science and Technology Facilities Council to tackling the challenges facing food supply. You can read the article here
SFN Sandpits scheduled for early 2018
After a fantastic response to our survey we've decided to go ahead with 2 sandpits as follows:
- Transforming food supply chains for a sustainable future
- Measuring the ground truth
The deadline for applications has now passed and we will be announcing the successful applicants soon. Please see our funding page for more details.
SFN Visit to Harwell
On 28th September we ran an STFC Food Network+ (SFN) visit to the STFC Harwell Campus. About 45 people attended, including more than 10 from industry (Pepsico, Mondelez, Unilever). In the morning we had talks introducing food challenges to STFC researchers (Tim Williams, Ian Noble, Jason Halford) and talks about STFC Facilities aimed at food research and industry (Sarah Rogers on ISIS, Tony Parker on CLF, Claire Pizzey on Diamond and Brian Matthews on the Scientific Computing Department). We had excellent feedback from the multiway speed meeting after lunch. Katharine Hollinshead (from STFC) and Harriet Trewin (from BBSRC) gave talks on funding opportunities after lunch, including a new announcement that STFC will contribute to the new BBSRC funding call on precision agriculture technology for the field. We had a brainstorming session on how the STFC Facilities could contribute to food challenges. We are working through the many ideas that came out of that - example highlights for sustainable production include detailed imaging of the root soil interface, imaging reactions to understand the effect of activars/ inhibitors and functional genomics. The food supply chain could benefit from STFC facilities in assessing food safety and adulteration, developing new resilient materials and packaging, developing tools for quality assurance in manufacturing and fundamental study of food solvent interactions. Finally consumer nutrition could benefit from STFC facilities via understanding the bioavailability of nutrients and study of digestion and absorption and point of use testing devices for nutrition. In addition most areas could benefit from using STFC data science and computing capabilities to collate and analyse large quantities of data. Due to popular demand we will organise a future larger visit offering a tour.
You can see the slides from the days excellent presentations here:
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SFN Champions
We are delighted to announce that we have now appointed our SFN Champions who will focus in on the intersecting topics of the SFN - to reach out to those of you in their area - and to interface their areas with the other Champions to ensure a lively cross-fertilisation of ideas. Have a look at our latest blog post to find out more. A big thankyou to the following for taking on these important roles for the Network:
Simon Pearson - SFN Champion for Sustainable Food Production
Sonal Choudhary - SFN Champion for Resilient Food Supply Chains
Christian Reynolds - SFN Champion for Improved Nutrition and Consumer Behaviours
Seb Oliver - SFN Champion for STFC Data Science
Stephen Serjeant - SFN Champion for STFC Technology
Sarah Rogers - SFN Champion for STFC Facilities
In the next couple of weeks will set up mailing lists for each of the above areas and populate them with the information we have based on the boxes you ticked in the survey and/or launch meeting session selection, but this information is likely to be incomplete, so if you don't hear anything in the next month from the Champion for your area then please contact Alison to be added to the relevant mailing list(s).
We are delighted to announce that we have now appointed our SFN Champions who will focus in on the intersecting topics of the SFN - to reach out to those of you in their area - and to interface their areas with the other Champions to ensure a lively cross-fertilisation of ideas. Have a look at our latest blog post to find out more. A big thankyou to the following for taking on these important roles for the Network:
Simon Pearson - SFN Champion for Sustainable Food Production
Sonal Choudhary - SFN Champion for Resilient Food Supply Chains
Christian Reynolds - SFN Champion for Improved Nutrition and Consumer Behaviours
Seb Oliver - SFN Champion for STFC Data Science
Stephen Serjeant - SFN Champion for STFC Technology
Sarah Rogers - SFN Champion for STFC Facilities
In the next couple of weeks will set up mailing lists for each of the above areas and populate them with the information we have based on the boxes you ticked in the survey and/or launch meeting session selection, but this information is likely to be incomplete, so if you don't hear anything in the next month from the Champion for your area then please contact Alison to be added to the relevant mailing list(s).
Digital Innovation in Livestock
Along with N8 Agrifood and CIEL the SFN are co- hosting this event in September to explore the latest in precision farming for enhanced performance, health and welfare of livestock. Unfortunately all of the academic places for this have now been taken up but if you have an industry background and would like to attend please contact Malou Lindholm for more information.
A full report will be available after the event.
Along with N8 Agrifood and CIEL the SFN are co- hosting this event in September to explore the latest in precision farming for enhanced performance, health and welfare of livestock. Unfortunately all of the academic places for this have now been taken up but if you have an industry background and would like to attend please contact Malou Lindholm for more information.
A full report will be available after the event.
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SFN News Release
The SFN officially launched on the 28th June 2017 and, along with our launch meeting (details below), we celebrated with a news release that you can see on our blog page.
SFN Launch Meeting
We’re delighted to announce that we had an extremely successful Launch Meeting on Wednesday 28th and Thursday 29th June in Manchester. Thanks to all of you that attended and participated and particular thanks to all of our speakers and session chairs.
You can find full details of the event on our dedicated webpage together with copies of the presentations given across the two days.
We’re delighted to announce that we had an extremely successful Launch Meeting on Wednesday 28th and Thursday 29th June in Manchester. Thanks to all of you that attended and participated and particular thanks to all of our speakers and session chairs.
You can find full details of the event on our dedicated webpage together with copies of the presentations given across the two days.
SFN Logo Competition
The SFN has a new logo! Congratulations and thanks to Anna Louise Sutherland for her winning entry
The SFN has a new logo! Congratulations and thanks to Anna Louise Sutherland for her winning entry
Seminars
SFN PI Sarah Bridle recently gave a Schuster Colloquium in Manchester to promote the work of the SFN and to encourage interactions between the STFC and Agri-Food Communities - this went out to a packed house with over 50 people attending and lots of new sign-ups to the SFN mailing list .
We are also taking this seminar on the road, speaking at institutions across the country over the coming months - see if your University is already hosting an event and if not, and you'd like to host a SFN seminar please contact us
Survey Results
The SFN recently ran a launch survey in order to find out how much STFC and agri-food researchers know about each other’s work and skills, and to gauge interest in the SFN.
Some of the headline results from this:
The SFN recently ran a launch survey in order to find out how much STFC and agri-food researchers know about each other’s work and skills, and to gauge interest in the SFN.
Some of the headline results from this:
- We had over 640 responses
- 75% of respondents were from STFC research or facilities
- 285 people said ‘I would like to join the SFN mailing list to receive updates every few weeks’
- 82 people said ‘I am considering attending the SFN launch meeting on 28/29 June in Manchester
Digital Innovation in Livestock
The SFN are supporting a Digital Innovation in Livestock Meeting that is being organised by N8 AgriFood in conjunction with the Centre of Digital Innovation Applied to Livestock (CIEL) - If you are interested in attending this event please contact us
The SFN are supporting a Digital Innovation in Livestock Meeting that is being organised by N8 AgriFood in conjunction with the Centre of Digital Innovation Applied to Livestock (CIEL) - If you are interested in attending this event please contact us
Sandpits
Our first Sandpit is planned for early in 2018 - Updates coming soon.
Our first Sandpit is planned for early in 2018 - Updates coming soon.
