Do you want to learn more about neutron and X-ray large scale facilities? Wondering if and how to include these techniques in your food research?
Welcome to the Northern Lights on Food Masterclass
Where: LINXS, workshop room on the 5th floor (Ideon Delta 5, Scheelevägen 19, Lund)
When: Sept 1-3, 2020
Who: All scientists from industry and academia new to X-ray and neutron methods
Cost: The course if free of charge (but with a no-show fee of 1500 SEK)
Certificate/credits: A certificate will be issued after the course. PhD are recommended to inquire with their institutions about credits. The recommendation is 5 ECTS (preparation time + class time and assignment 125 hours)
Application deadline: July 30
Understanding food structure that controls storage qualities, uptake and nutritional value as well as texture and perception is the key challenge for food scientist and product developers in academia and food industry. Structural properties of food are multi-dimensional and we therefore need to understand their structure at various length and time scales. The quality and availability of the product is also subject to consumer demands and choices made by plant breeder and food producer. We therefore need to consider the whole production, from raw material quality, starting with seed quality and plant breeding, to food processing and the final product. The latter also includes packaging and how the food interacts with packaging during storage and consumer handling.
Techniques available at Large-Scale Research Infrastructure MAX IV Laboratory and the European Spallation Source, ESS, include spectroscopic, imaging and scattering techniques based on either X-rays or neutrons. These techniques allow us to obtain detailed compositional maps of food materials and obtain structural information ranging from the atomic, nano- to the micrometer scale. The high brilliance at such facilities also enables fast in situ experiments that can help us understand how to control structure formation at different developmental stages of food products.
With this two and a half day course, you will acquire basic knowledge of selected techniques accessed in large scale facilities, and how to design experiments with particular attention to the complexity of food systems. You will be provided with the entry point to these exciting new tools, including developing your own project proposal for beamtime at large scale research infrastructures. Collaborative work between participants will enable you to share experience and knowledge of how these powerful techniques could complement lab based advanced chemical and physical techniques routinely used in food research, such as microscopy, light scattering, rheology and processing simulations.
Applications to be received by July 30, 2020.
Notification of acceptance by August 15, 2020.
After the deadline for registration a committee will decide which applicants are accepted for the Masterclass. The selection will be based on the applicants’ letter of motivation (maximum 1 A4) that must be included in the registration. The motivation letter should declare the applicants’ research focus and what they want to gain from neutron and X-ray based methods. We aim at having a group of selected candidates representing a good distribution in food-related research topics and priority of acceptance will be given to applicants with relevant research questions.
The Masterclass is organized with funding support from Formas and LINXS and is free of charge. The number of participants is limited to 25 students.
A no show fee of 1500 SEK will be imposed.
The lectures will cover following areas and techniques:
Elemental mapping/obtaining chemical information in soft and biological tissues (X-ray absorption spectroscopy)
4D imaging of food stuffs at high resolution (down to 30nm) (X-ray and neutron tomography)
Structural information on the atomic scale (X-ray and neutron diffraction)
Structural information of disordered or partially ordered materials in the nanometer to micrometer range (small-angle X-ray and neutron scattering, SAXS and SANS)
Structural information of surface properties of materials (grazing incidence SAXS and SANS and neutron reflectometry)
Complimentary techniques including rheology and microscopy
The course will focus on methods, available instruments and experimental environments, data evaluation tools and modelling approaches as well as limitations of the techniques and some complementary techniques. The techniques will be explained through general and wide overviews, as well as specific and detailed examples. The selected applicants will be requested to prepare a one slide summary of their research project/interests at the start of the Masterclass as well as a literature scan on their project topic in preparation for beamtime application work. The applicants will also be requested to design a beamtime proposal based on their own research at the end of the course.
Due to the current Coronavirus pandemic and imposed travel restrictions some of the lectures will be conducted remotely. These lectures will be available for download prior to the course as part of the course preparation. The planned practical exercises will due to current social distancing recommendations not be possible and therefore focus of the course will be on data analysis on example systems.
List of lecturers:
Prof. Brent S. Murray, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Prof. Bill Williams – Massey University, New Zealand
Prof. Jan Skov Pedersen – Aarhus University, Denmark
Dr. Richard Campbell – University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Dr. Jesper Harholt - Carlsberg Research Laboratory, Denmark
Assoc. Prof. Stephen Hall – Lunds Tekniska Högskola, Sweden
Dr. Ann Terry – MAX IV Laboratory, Sweden
Prof. Niklas Lorén – RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Sweden
Dr. Kajsa Sigfridsson Clauss – MAX IV Laboratory, Swede
Dr. Judith Houston – European Spallation Source, ESS, Sweden
Dr. Emanuel Larsson – RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Sweden
Assist. Prof. Mads Ry Jørgensen – Aarhus University/MAX IV Laboratory
Prof. Tommy Nylander – Lund University, Sweden
