Abstract:

Traditionally, the decision about which flavours to pair in a tasting experience has been as much the personal choice of the chef or, more likely, the sommelier, as anything else. However, the last few years have seen a rapid growth of interest in the pairing of flavours that has now moved well beyond the traditional pairing of the courses on a fine food menu with flights of wine. Nowadays, in fact, one can find examples of people pairing everything from beer with food, tea with cheese and chocolate etc. As interest in the marketing potential of flavour pairing has risen, along with the growing public fascination in the topic, various groups of scientists have become increasingly interested in attempting to understand the principles underlying the successful pairing of flavours. In this talk, I want to highlight the relative strengths and weaknesses of the chemical, computational (gastronomy), and perceptual approaches to pairing flavours (see Spence, 2020a; Spence, Wang, & Youssef, 2017). Thereafter, I wish to show how the various perceptual principles of pairing can be extended beyond the domain of pairing flavour with flavour to consider the rapidly growing are of sonic seasoning (Spence, 2017), where specific pieces of music or soundscapes are paired with particular tastes/flavours.

Bio:Professor Charles Spence is a world-famous experimental psychologist with a specialization in neuroscience-inspired multisensory design. He has worked with many of the world’s largest companies across the globe since establishing the Crossmodal Research Laboratory (CRL) at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University in 1997. Prof. Spence has published over 1,000 academic articles and edited or authored, 15 books including, in 2014, the Prose prize- winning “The perfect meal”, and the international bestseller “Gastrophysics: The new science of eating” (2017; Penguin Viking) – winner of the 2019 Le Grand Prix de la Culture Gastronomique from Académie Internationale de la Gastronomie. Much of Prof. Spence’s work focuses on the design of enhanced multisensory food and drink experiences, through collaborations with chefs, baristas, mixologists, chocolatiers, perfumiers, and the food and beverage, and flavour and fragrance industries. Prof. Spence has worked extensively in the world of multisensory experiential wine and coffee and has also worked extensively on the question of how technology will transform our dining/drinking experiences in the future.

8:10 am PST "Model for Cooking Recipe Generation using Reinforcement Learning"  Jumpei Fujita,University of Tsukuba, Japan
8:40 am PST "Detecting Substitutability of Cooking Steps based on Prior Knowledge Embedded Hidden Markov Model"  Hiroshi Uehara ,Akita prefectural university, Japan
9:00 am PST "Developing Local Food Map for Digital Archiving of Japanese Local Foods and Considering Its Redesign" Ikue Kawamura ,Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan

Abstract: Food is the most important sources of joy and health. Despite all advances in technology and social consciousness, there are two important challenging problems related to food that must be solved. Food for health and food for enjoyment are considered distinct attributes. What I like to eat is often not what helps my body! Much has been written about how to make food tastier and how to eat healthy. However, every person is different in her taste and enjoyment of food and her body is different in responding to different ingredients in food items. Ideally, food should be customized for each person. We believe that the technology is now ready to address this important challenge. In this presentation we will discuss how to build personal food models digital food atlas and use those in selecting food for enjoyment and health. It is now within the realm of science and technology to help us select food that will help us enjoy it and keep us healthy.

Bio:Ramesh Jain is an entrepreneur, researcher, and educator. He is a Donald Bren Professor in Information & Computer Sciences at University of California, Irvine. His research interests covered Control Systems (cybernetics), Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, and Multimedia Computing. His current research passion is in addressing health issues using cybernetic principles building on the progress in sensors, mobile, processing, artificial intelligence, computer vision, and storage technologies. He is founding director of the Institute for Future Health at UCI. He is a Fellow of AAAS, ACM, IEEE, AAAI, IAPR, and SPIE. Ramesh co-founded several companies, managed them in initial stages, and then turned them over to professional management. He enjoys new challenges and likes to use technology to solve them. He is participating in addressing the biggest challenge for us all: how to enjoy long life in good health.