Around 20 top experts will gather at The Sensory Logic of the Gastronomic Brain
Behind the scenes – some brainy bites
After an amazing first event, this are some of the images that best capture what happened after gathering chefs and scientists from all over the world, in an intense session of work and colaboration
Andoni Luis Aduriz. Mugaritz
Always running out of the kitchen, Andoni likes to explore and combine the best of different fields to create new approaches to gastronomy. He is head chef of Mugaritz, a 2-Michelin star restaurant in the Basque Country that is essentially a research environment to help break down the barriers to the way we perceive everyday things with an interdisciplinary relationship with food. He establishes connections between…
Begoña Alfaro. Azti
Manager of Sensory & Consumer Sciences Laboratory at AZTI. PhD in Predictive Microbiology and Sensory Sciences by the Basque Country University. Master degree in Marketing by Faculty of Economics and Business Studies (UPV, 2000). Experience in Sensory and Consumer Research for Product Development. Her research has focused on the exploration of new methodologies to further understanding sensory and consumer perception….
Eneko Atxa. Azurmendi
Pushing boundaries. For Eneko Atxa, science has been a force of good to push us forward, and this is what he does as head chef of 3-Michelin star Azurmendi, in Larrabetzu named Most Sustainable Restaurant in the World 2014 by The World’s 50 Best Restaurant. He collaborates with the University of the Basque Country and with hospitals and R&D companies in the…
Daphne Bavelier. University of Rochester
Daphne Bavelier is an expert on how humans learn. In particular, she studies how the brain adapts to changes in experience, either by nature – for example, deafness – or by training – for example, playing video games. Initially trained in Biology at the ‘Ecole Normale Superieure de Paris’, she then received a PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from…
Heston Blumenthal. The Fat Duck
Internationally famous for his award winning, 3 Michelin starred The Fat Duck in Berkshire, Heston Blumenthal is considered to be one of the best and most influential chefs of his generation. Completely self-taught, he has pushed the boundaries of a traditional kitchen and changed the way people cook and think about eating. After extensive academic research, Heston was the first…
Adrian Cheok. Mixed Reality Lab
“Can we go from the age of information to the age of experience?”, he asks, while developing new ways of relating with technology, including food. Adrian David Cheok is Director of the Imagineering Institute, Malaysia, and Founder and Director of the Mixed Reality Lab, created to push the boundaries of research into interactive new media technologies through the combination of…
Dan Felder. Pilot R+D
Dan Felder is the Chief Innovation Officer of Pilot R+D. He couples his culinary skill and creativity with a deep understanding of the science of food to serve as the driving force of inspiration for many of Pilot’s projects. Having served as head of research and development for the Momofuku restaurants, as well as three Michelin star Saison, Dan has…
Bernard Lahousse. Food Pairing
Imagine your own virtual chef, one that is able to suggest new culinary creations, unique spice blends, cocktails, smoothies and much more. A virtual chef with superb taste, capable of generating exciting yet perfectly balanced flavour combinations like you’ve never tasted before. For Bernard Lahousse, a bio-engineer who focuses on the intersection between science and food, this is not a…
Matthieu Louis. Centre for Genomic Regulation
A physicist by training, Matthieu Louis works on modelling neural processes that underlie the representation of sensory signals and the control of behaviour in fruit flies. He leads the Sensory Systems and Behaviour group in the Systems Biology program of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (Spain). The Louis lab studies how odour tracking comes about in terms of neural circuit computation in the Drosophila melanogaster larva. A variety of experimental and…
Zach Mainen. Champalimaud Foundation
A psychologist by training, Zach Mainen’s work focuses on the neural mechanisms underlying adaptive behaviour in rodents. In particular, he investigates the impact of uncertainty on brain functions and perceptual decisions. Zach’s research focuses on the brain mechanisms of decision-making. He studied psychology and philosophy at Yale University, received his doctorate in Neuroscience from the University of California, San Diego,…
Irene Miguel-Aliaga. Imperial College London
Internal organs are constantly exchanging signals, and can undergo profound anatomical and functional changes in response to them, even in fully developed organisms. Such organ plasticity results from a need to integrate and respond to both nutritional information and internal state, and is key to maintaining homeostasis and driving adaptive changes. Irene Miguel-Aliaga, a Professor of Genetics and Physiology at…
Stephen O’Rahilly. University of Cambridge
Stephen O’Rahilly graduated in Medicine from University College Dublin in 1981. From 1982 to 1991 he undertook postgraduate clinical and research training in general medicine, diabetes and endocrinology in London, Oxford and Harvard. In 1991 he obtained a Wellcome Trust Senior Clinical Fellowship and established his laboratory at the University of Cambridge. In 1996 he was appointed to a newly created…
Alexandre Pouget. Geneva University
Alexandre Pouget is a theoretical neuroscientist in the department of Basic Neuroscience at the University of Geneva, Switzerland where he heads of the computational cognitive neuroscience laboratory. He received the 2016 Carnegie prize in Mind and Brain Sciences for his work on neural coding and computation. “Uncovering general principles of computation in neural circuits, and more particularly, cortical circuits is…
Leah Sarris. Tulane University
Teaching medical students how to cook and giving them good knowledge about food is a key factor for chef Leah Sarris, who is the Program Director of the Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine at Tulane University. She runs the teaching kitchen in a groundbreaking new program that teaches students, doctors and patients the tenets of healthy cooking and the significant…
Dana Small. The John B. Pierce Laboratory
What is the link between brain and obesity? How do weight gain and the associated physiological adaptations influence brain function? How do the neural circuits governing feeding and flavour preference formation predispose certain individuals to gain weight? These are the kind of questions Dana Small intends to answer as Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University and Deputy Director of Research…
Noam Sobel. Weizmann University
Olfaction in human subjects and in machines (electronic noses) is the subject that interests Noam Sobel, the head of the Olfaction Research Group in the Department of Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. A pioneer in the field of human olfaction and psychophysics, his research covers a wide range of topics, from the mechanisms of odour representation in…
Charles Spence. University of Oxford
Charles Spence calls for a new way of understanding how information is integrated across different sensory modalities its what Charles Spence calls for. As head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory at Oxford University, he focuses on how a better understanding of the human mind will lead to the better design of multisensory foods, products, interfaces and environments in the future; and on how examining…
Leslie Vosshall. Rockefeller University
How does the human brain make sense of the many chemicals we taste and smell in our daily lives? Leslie Vosshall looks for answers in her lab at the Rockefeller University, taking a multi-disciplinary approach spanning genetics, neurobiology and behaviour. Vosshall has been studying the basic rules of the human sense of smell since 2002. Together with her collaborator Andreas…
Janice Wong. 2am:dessertbar
The boundaries between sweet and savoury are there to be pushed. To do just that, Janice Wong created 2am:dessertbar, where she offers a cerebral experience with carefully researched, high-tech dishes. Thoughtful and creative in the realm of desserts (and far beyond), she started out in the culinary world after graduating in Economics from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She learned from some of the…
Chris Young. ChefSteps
Founder and Managing Director of Chefsteps, the first free-to-learn culinary school. Chefsteps.com and its companion app are designed to inspire creativity and encourage experimentation through high-quality interactive content, techniques, tools, and resources. With a background in biochemistry and mathematics, Chris fuses science and technology to develop a culinary experience. He is the co-author of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, a…
Jozef Youssef. Kitchen Theory
Those how research gastrophysics are inspired by neuroscience, but are much more interested in studying people’s real-world food behaviours. This is the case with Jozef Youssef, founder and chef patron of Kitchen Theory, a collaborative project that focuses on the development of multi-sensory events, experience design and research into sensory gastronomy carried out in collaboration with Charles Spence of Oxford University’s Crossmodal Department….
Charles Zuker. Columbia University
Dr. Charles Zuker has made significant contributions to three major sensory transduction systems – vision, mechanosensation and taste. His lab has used molecular, genetic and physiological approaches to investigate the biology of sensory transduction mechanisms in photoreceptors, mechanoreceptors and taste receptors. His work on mammalian taste has completely transformed our understanding of taste from the identification and function of taste…
Special session open to the public
October 26, 2016 9.00-9.15 Welcome. Joxe Mari Aizega (Basque Culinary Center) 9.15-9.45 A brainy tongue. Andoni Luis Aduriz (Mugaritz) 9.45-10.30 Multisensory- Past, Present and Future. Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck) 10.30-11.00 How data will change the future of food: Foodpairing and consumer flavour intelligence. Bernard Lahousse (FoodPairing) 11.00-11.30 Coffee Break 11.30-12.00 Kitchen Theory –…