Usually in December in the Netherlands, it is tradition to eat “pepernoten” and exchange gifts. How can you make this time of the year even more exciting? Well, by participating in the virtual SensAsia conference in December 2021!
Unfortunately, we were unable to come and meet everyone in person. Luckily for us, we could still join the conference by watching it in the comfort of our warm homes sipping hot chocolate. Thank you so much for the organizer for such a nice and organized event! Together with us, over 100 people joined us at the 4th Asian Sensory and Consumer Research Symposium.
Trends
SenseAsia 2021 conference gave us fascinating insights on sensory and consumer science by experts from Asia and other regions worldwide. The first keynote speaker, John Ennis (Aigora, USA), took the audience through some of the hottest future trends. He talked about the new technologies able to bridge the physical and virtual world as part of the fourth industrial revolution. Some of them include hearables, wearables, edge computing, smart-packaging, augmented lenses, voice-activated interfaces, blockchain, and tools for telepresence. In the same field, Katerine Mendoza (GSK Consumer HealthCare, Singapore) also provided new insight on Ai powered technology for improving the sustainability of consumer research.
Many interesting talks focused on the impact that COVID had on our life. For instance, Ragita Pramudya (University of Arkansas, USA) showed how physical and digital commensality could influence the hedonic impression of meals.
New tastes
Besides developments in sensory methodology, we also got the opportunity to learn about new tastes and products. In particular, Motokana Kuroda (Ajinomoto Co., Inc., Japan) described the mechanism and sensory characteristics of kokumi substances, while Saumya Sood (University of Reading, UK) guided us in how we can substitute salt using Salicornia species.
This year we were especially enthusiastic to join the conference as we got the opportunity to introduce one of our latest research projects on AI-powered Speech-to-Text and Text-to-Speech techniques which was presented by Hester Kreuzen.
We would like to thank again the organizer all the presenters for providing us with such inspirational topics. We look forward to starting to implement some ideas for 2022!
