Exploring the Science Behind Creation

Animated by the opportunity to take product development ideas from their imaginations through to virtual fruition, participants flocked to the popular, interactive IFT FIRST Innovation Lab, offered on the Expo floor on the concluding day of the event, Wednesday, June 17.

Dubbed “a product development journey where science meets creativity,” attendees were ushered through the real-world steps of product development: choosing a consumer profile and product category target; facing formulation challenges in order to satisfy consumers' health and nutrition expectations; employing novel technologies and innovations to explore creative flavor combinations, experiment with new ingredients, increase speed to market, and decrease production costs; ensuring food safety; and finally, creating an product image with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The opportunity to learn about using AI for product formulation brought both Ploy Wong, an undergraduate student in food science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Tomer Hatzir, a graduate student in food science at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg (Canada), to the lab.

The AI software platform Innov8 OS, demonstrated at the lab by BCD Founder and CEO Vinay Indraganti, accelerates food formulations through AI-driven experiments. “We can do a lot of experiments by doing only one experiment,” said Indraganti.

“I was playing around with a sugar-free, dairy-based product, and (Innov8 OS) gives the entire recipe and sensory evaluation, helping to cut down on iterations,” Wong reported. Hatzir said he was impressed by AI’s potential to render food production more efficient and precise.

Madison Wright, a graduate student in food science at Alabama A&M University, Huntsville, who is in the process of formulating her own functional beverage product for her master's thesis, and is currently focused on its sensory aspects, found the lab “very informative and helpful.”

Aki Dawson, an undergraduate in food science at Alabama A&M, attended the lab to explore the direction he’d like to take in his career, possibly R&D and food safety in the meat and poultry space.

Alabama A&M food science instructor Elvis Baidoo, who specializes in teaching about product development, said the lab was “very good for the students and myself.” The promise of AI, Baidoo said, is that besides being flexible and versatile, it has the potential to save a lot of time and money in product formulation.ft