From for­mu­la­tion to process­es: AI as a dri­ver of inno­va­tion — was the theme of the fourth edi­tion of the AI Ren­dezvous, held on March 27 at the UTC Daniel Thomas Inno­va­tion Cen­tre. Numer­ous speak­ers explored the trans­for­ma­tive role of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in the fields of human nutri­tion and health.

Sev­er­al experts gath­ered at UTC in late March for a new repeat of the AI Ren­dezvous, orga­nized as part of the SAFE AI Chair led by Prof. Sébastien Dester­cke, with sup­port from the UTC Foun­da­tion for Inno­va­tion and the SUNRISE Alliance. All par­tic­i­pants high­light­ed how AI is rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing for­mu­la­tion and process­es, from knowl­edge engi­neer­ing and data sci­ence to automa­tion, com­put­er vision and intel­li­gent deci­sion sup­port sys­tems. This fourth edi­tion brought togeth­er lead­ing experts from acad­e­mia and indus­try to exam­ine con­crete appli­ca­tions of AI with­in food sys­tems and indus­tri­al inno­va­tion. The dis­cus­sions high­light­ed the inte­gra­tion of AI through­out the whole val­ue chain, con­tribut­ing to safer, high­er-qual­i­ty food, per­son­al­ized health­care solu­tions and, con­se­quent­ly, enhanced well-being. The day’s pro­gramme includ­ed ple­nary ses­sions in Eng­lish as well as a high-lev­el round­table dis­cus­sion on how AI is trans­form­ing pro­fes­sion­al prac­tices in for­mu­la­tion and process devel­op­ment. These dis­cus­sions brought togeth­er aca­d­e­m­ic and indus­tri­al exper­tise, high­light­ing con­crete appli­ca­tions and future prospects for pro­fes­sion­al skills and prac­tices. Ded­i­cat­ed net­work­ing ses­sions also fos­tered exchanges among researchers, indus­try lead­ers, and inno­va­tion stakeholders.

Addressing Food Safety Challenges

Among the inter­na­tion­al experts was George Ioan­nis Nychas, emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor at the Agri­cul­tur­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Athens, Greece and dis­tin­guished pro­fes­sor at Shan­dong Agri­cul­tur­al Uni­ver­si­ty in Chi­na. He is cur­rent­ly a mem­ber of the Hel­lenic Nation­al Author­i­ty for High­er Edu­ca­tion (HAHE), Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Hel­lenic Acad­e­my of Agri­cul­ture, Chair hold­er of the “Food Safe­ty” work­ing group of the Euro­pean tech­nol­o­gy plat­form “Food for Life,” and ‘alter­nate’ stand-in mem­ber of the EFSA (Euro­pean Food Safe­ty Author­i­ty) Man­age­ment Board. His pre­sen­ta­tion focused on the evo­lu­tion of the food indus­try, from lab­o­ra­to­ry results to the human­iza­tion of bots. For his part, Pro­fes­sor Fady Mohareb is inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized at the inter­sec­tion of bioin­for­mat­ics, genomics and genet­ics, food qual­i­ty and safe­ty, advanced arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence method­olo­gies and food sci­ences. He has exten­sive expe­ri­ence lead­ing and man­ag­ing nation­al and inter­na­tion­al research pro­grammes that inte­grate genomics, rapid detec­tion tech­nolo­gies and data-dri­ven mod­el­ling to address chal­lenges relat­ed to food qual­i­ty, authen­tic­i­ty and nutri­tion­al safe­ty. “My work bridges the gap between fun­da­men­tal mol­e­c­u­lar research and applied AI solu­tions, enabling real-time mon­i­tor­ing, pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics and dig­i­tal trace­abil­i­ty with­in agro-food sys­tems. Draw­ing on more than twen­ty years of aca­d­e­m­ic lead­er­ship, I have devel­oped inter­dis­ci­pli­nary col­lab­o­ra­tions between acad­e­mia, indus­try and tech­nol­o­gy part­ners to trans­form inno­v­a­tive research into scal­able plat­forms and high-impact outcomes.”

Examples at CNIEL and L’Oréal

Fan­ny Tenen­haus-Aziza is the Direc­tor of Data and Sta­tis­tics at CNIEL. Since 2020, she has been lead­ing the data man­age­ment strat­e­gy for the French dairy sec­tor, address­ing issues relat­ed to reg­u­la­tion, inter­op­er­abil­i­ty, stan­dard­iza­tion, data qual­i­ty, and gov­er­nance, while pro­mot­ing evi­dence-based deci­sion-mak­ing. Dur­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion “Data and AI: Their Con­tri­bu­tion to Dairy Prod­uct Safe­ty,” she empha­sized the spe­cial atten­tion that must be giv­en to data qual­i­ty, data gov­er­nance, and data sci­ence skills. “Spe­cial atten­tion must also be paid to the trans­paren­cy of AI mod­els and account­abil­i­ty for the results obtained through AI.” For his part, Gio­van­ni Pal­ma, head of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and com­put­er vision with­in L’Oréal’s Research and Inno­va­tion divi­sion, leads a spe­cial­ized team ded­i­cat­ed to the apply­ing of deep learn­ing and advanced com­pu­ta­tion­al meth­ods to cos­met­ic for­mu­la­tion and aug­ment­ed beau­ty. “My work aims to lever­age AI to accel­er­ate inno­va­tion and pre­dict prod­uct per­for­mance.” Patrice Buche, a research engi­neer at INRAE since 2002, works pri­mar­i­ly on inte­grat­ing data and knowl­edge from het­ero­ge­neous sources, on the design of mul­ti-cri­te­ria and mul­ti-stake­hold­er deci­sion-sup­port sys­tems based on struc­tured and semi-struc­tured data­bas­es, with applied projects in the field of food and bio-based prod­uct engineering.

KD