Gastronomy symposium

NEW DELHI: With an objective to create an ecosystem of chefs, scientists, medical professionals, and culinary enthusiasts working on ‘data-driven food innovations, Center for Computational Biology at IIIT-DELHI organised a symposium on “Computational Gastronomy: The Emerging Data Science of Food, Flavors, and Health”.

Chef Manjit S. Gill ([resident, Indian Federation of Culinary Associations), Jaspal Sabharwal (Tagtaste), Dr. Ganesh Bagler (Complex Systems Laboratory, IIIT-DELHI), Gurmeet Singh (head, Centre for Ayurveda Biology and Holistic Nutrition Trans Disciplinary University), Mitali Mukherjee, Chef Y B Mathur, director at Culinary Design and Application Group&chef Akshay Malhotra (Executive Chef, ITC Welcome Hotel, Dwarka, New Delhi) were the principal speakers in the event.

The ‘Symposium on Computational Gastronomy” is an attempt to promote this emerging interdisciplinary science involving culinary data collection and curation, data analytics, machine learning, natural language processing, and pattern mining. Academics from other states were also in attendance.

Jaspal Sabharwal presented the keynote talk on “Building Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound” while highlighting the role of data-driven strategies in revolutionizing the food and beverages sector.

Bagler delivered a talk to describe the serendipitous discovery of characteristic food pairing pattern in Indian cuisine from his lab and subsequent advances achieved in world cuisine analysis, Flavordb mobile app, health impact of foods and taste prediction.