Monday 11th of June – University of Waterloo 

Written by: Birgit Dekkers

After a long bus trip and a very nice and sunny Sunday, on Monday, we continued our scientific programme and we visited Waterloo University. After a half an hour bus trip we arrived at the Waterloo campus. A short walk around one of the many parking areas, we found the conference room. Professor Christine Moresoli welcomed our group and shortly explained about the organizational structure at Waterloo University and how the university collaborates with other institutes and universities. Thereafter Remko introduced our university and group.

The scientific programme started with a presentation from Jan. He gave an overview of all the work conducted within the food structuring group and explained a bit more about his own topic. This was a nice introduction for Yu Peng to introduce the wide applicability of soy beans and how the extraction processes impact the ingredient properties and the subsequent use in final applications. Nynke explained how she is using the work from Jan, Yu Peng and the others in the food structuring group in a sustainability analysis, using both LCA and exergy. Lastly, Qinhui Xing introduced a sustainable approach to fractionate ingredients from lentils. She gave a nice outline of her project and some results on changes in the set-up.

After a coffee(less) break, we heard three presentations from the Waterloo. The first presentation from Goretty Dias (from the Industrial Ecology Department) was on sustainability with LCA and diet modelling. Thereafter there was a PhD student from the Nanotechnology department who illustrated the use of cellulose nanoparticles for several explications. Finally Professor Christine Moresoli gave an overview of the work done in her group on 3D printing of Foods. Afterwards, we had a nice pizza lunch and some time for more discussions.

After lunch, we walked to the Earth science museum with some very nice stones and rocks.

The last activity of the day was a visit to a microbrewery where we tasted three very nice beers and had a tour around the facilities and played some nice games. After a small bus tour back to Guelph we separated in small groups for nice (Asian) dinners!