Imperial’s Food Student Research Network Annual Conference
Read about the first annual conference of the Food Student Research Network from ICB PhD student Tom Kitto, Student Network Manager for the FoNS.
In early 2022 Dr. Aaron Lett received funding from the college's student shapers programme to start the college's first student driven research network, focusing on food. The main aim was to draw together Imperial's four faculties through a conference that would promote inter-faculty networking and discussions for the diverse field of 'food'. I joined as the representative for FoNS. We were Aaron Lett plus 3 other students (1 from Engineering, Medicine and Business).
Our mission was to set up the network and a winter conference from scratch. We promoted the conference to all PhD and Master's students, asking for abstracts and contact details for a contact list. Gradually, we pulled the conference together - booking a venue, catering, organising the talks through the day (my role), finding chairs (me again), organinsing the post session, writing blogs, creating promotianal webpages and posters...
The conference went very well! After covid it was nice to see what research was going on in imperial, to get out of your bubble and start thinking about ideas and problems in the food industry. Things that would be very hard to do otherwise.
Moving forward, I'm working as a volunteer now. A winter seminar on the gut microbiome we are setting up for Dr. Jia Li will happen early February (she has invited the guests). The contact list is likewise being used to promote events students are setting up, for example Great Exhibition Road Festival stands.
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Reporter
Hannah Cameron
Department of Chemistry
