The event marked participation of eighty-two participants from different European cities, including consortium members, stakeholders and IAB members, project fellows and other researchers in the Food Consumer Science (FCS) field.
Within COMFOCUS, SPI is responsible for communication, dissemination, and exploitation of the project, and also served as a co-organizer of the event.
The event was held under the slogan “Advancing Open Science in the FCS field” and aimed to share the final results of the project with its audience. It concluded smoothly with a series of engaging and insightful sessions, alongside demonstrations of emerging technologies.
In the conference, we highlighted our goal to advance the FCS field beyond its current fragmentation and our aim to make the “new way of working” developed within COMFOCUS a model for the field, incorporating three levels of integration:
- Institutional Collaboration – Promoting access to facilities and facilitating staff exchanges to optimize resource utilization and advance the field.
- Social Integration – Building a network of FCS researchers that is more inclusive, offering equal opportunities to early-career researchers, regardless of their location.
- Data Infrastructure – Adopting FAIR data and RRI principles to ensure that data are harmonized for interoperability and reusability.
Through a set of theoretical and practical sessions, participants could learn about Open Science in FCS and explore experiences with emerging technologies. Specifically, participants were introduced to Virtual Reality, Eye Tracking, and EEG devices, with live demonstrations by Noldus Hub.
To conclude both the Final Conference and the project, a panel discussion was organised to gather reflections on the “new way of working” from various perspectives. This provided an excellent opportunity for participants to share their insights on COMFOCUS’s achievements and the value it brings to the field of FCS.
Project partners believe that COMFOCUS will prolong its existence through the continued collaboration of its research community over these unforgettable years, advancing FCS beyond its current level of fragmentation
