Report from Eurosense 2020

Ex aequo E3S Eurosense Student Award – Emma Regan

I would like to thank the European Sensory Science Society (E3S) for awarding me with the E3S Student Award. By receiving this award, I was afforded the opportunity to attend the 9th Eurosense Conference, which for the first time ever was held online due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

On a personal note, this was my first year attending Eurosense and it most certainly did not disappoint. Participating in this conference gave me the opportunity to learn about all of the fascinating research that is being conducted in the field of sensory and consumer science globally. In addition to this, I was honoured to be selected to present my work in an oral presentation in one of the “Healthy Eating” parallel sessions. This was an excellent opportunity for me to present some of the research from my PhD at an internationally recognised sensory science conference which was attended by experts in the field of sensory and consumer science from across the world.

The theme for the Eurosense 2020 conference was ‘A Sense of Innovation’ with the conference covering a wide range of topics from sensory for “healthy eating” and “sustainability”, to a more methodological focus with topics such as “cognition”, “implicit and explicit approaches”, and “new technologies” to name but a few. I was delighted with the conference’s coverage of sensory for vulnerable populations as this is very relevant to my PhD which focuses on exploring the sensory profiles of Oral Nutritional Supplements for older adults.

The conference commenced with the first ever European Sensory Science Society (E3S) Early Career Researcher Seminar. This seminar included 14 wonderful presentations which covered a wide range of research topics. Also on this day were a number of different sensometrics tutorials and the first keynote speaker Sam Bompass certainly broke the ice by delivering an electrifying talk on innovation and creativity and the future of food, which was very fitting to the conference theme. The following days of the conference were filled with interesting talks from keynote speakers, multiple parallel oral sessions, poster, and flash poster presentations, as well as four different workshops on a range of topics.

While it is very disappointing that we could not travel to Rotterdam this year for Eurosense 2020, this did not affect the conference attendance with 733 attendees at this year’s conference. The interactive online conference platform was excellent. The ability to access the on demand recordings from the conference has been of great benefit as it has allowed me to revisit presentations and has ensured that I have not missed anything from Eurosense 2020.

Once again, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the E3S award committee for presenting me with this award which enabled me to attend the most relevant conference in my domain. Receiving this award and attending this conference has most certainly been a highlight of my PhD career to date. Finally, I feel it is very important to give a special mention to the conference chairs and the rest of the organising committee for hosting such a successful conference in such challenging circumstances.

After the huge success of Eurosense 2020 I am very much looking forward to attending the conference again in 2022, albeit in person this time.

Emma Regan

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