Themes and Keywords

The conference includes topics relating to food and non-food applications where the study of the senses plays a key role including:

Sensory in sickness and in health
Keywords: Taste and olfactory dysfunction, sensory alterations in Covid/health conditions, sensory aspects of satiety and satiation, food intake and malnutrition/overeating, disease related sensory impairment, sensory and nutrition reformulation, sensory and healthy food choices; sensory and eating/dietary behaviour, sensory aspects in food behaviours across the life-course from infants to elderly.

Method development and optimisation in sensory and consumer science
Keywords: Sensory and affective responses to food and non-food products, sensory and hedonic expectations, implicit versus explicit responses, sensory and affective methods (including emotions), context effects in sensory and consumer studies, including immersive techniques (e.g. virtual reality etc.), co-creation, new methods in food and non-food sensory science, multi-sensory technologies, artificial intelligence applied in integration with sensory science, remote sensory testing.

Fundamentals of sensory perception
Keywords: Taste, odour, texture, chemosensory perception, flavour perception, phenotypes and genotypes, factors affecting individual differences in sensory responses.

Sensometrics
Keywords: New statistical approaches applied to data analysis in sensory and consumer studies including multiblock methods, clustering methods, artificial intelligence, text mining.

Sensory science as a tool for sustainable packaging and product communication
Keywords: Innovative packaging solutions and consumer acceptance, response to eco-labelling, shelf-life, sustainable packaging and consumer segmentation, food waste and sensory aspects.               
The role of sensory in product story generation, sensory claim substantiation, sensory marketing, experience shopping (sensory shop design), sensory innovations

Socio-cultural, psychological, sensory and affective barriers for new product development and innovation acceptance
Keywords: Psychological traits, taste responsiveness, attitudes and their associations in determining sensory and affective barriers to the acceptance of new products.
Influences of socio-cultural differences and psychological factors in sensory and affective responses to food and non-food products

Sensory challenges and opportunities for existing, novel and alternative proteins
Keywords: New product development with novel and alternative proteins; sustainable plants, insects, fungi, algae. Sustainable consumption, texture re-engineering and sensory aspects; sensory, health, functional and nutritional profile and consumer acceptance of novel and alternative protein applications
New product development for more sustainable meat, dairy and seafood consumption, sustainability labelling

Sensory aspects in food service
Keywords: Meal acceptance in food service outlets, institutional canteens (schools; hospitals; work canteens), changes in meal patterns, meal contexts and sensory and hedonic responses. Food acceptance and travel conditions: e.g. in-flight food acceptance; on-board food acceptance (trains, ferries, international space stations – effects of temperature, pressure, storing conditions etc).

Sensory science in non-food products
Keywords: The application of sensory science to non-food consumer goods such as textiles, cosmetics, dental products, personal care products as well as to drugs and medical devices. 

Disruptive technologies and the future of digital sensory science
Use of technology to capture or model human sensory perception. methods for how best to recruit and train sensory panel for digital sensory data capture and data analysis, overview of sensory science instruments, the use and relevance of virtual and augmented reality to capture sensory perception. Multi-sensory technologies, biometric technologies, physiological and emotional sensory responses.