The Faculty of Engineering of the University of Szeged – the only Hungarian university to participate – was selected to take part in the ’EIT Food Consumer Engagement Labs’ international project.
From Spain to Lithuania, from Italy to Poland, ten universities were given the opportunity to work on innovations and the consumer perceptions of the development of new product concepts in the ’EIT Food Consumer Engagement Labs’.
Consumer perception regarding the innovations of the food industry will be studied in a project involving these ten universities. Participants acquire knowledge on innovations of the food industry, regional food companies, as well as traders and packaging material manufacture companies. One of the main goals of the project is to establish a direct relationship between developers and consumers who engage in innovative developments. Consumers in Hungary are mostly conservative, therefore it is important to understand and to reveal the innovations in the food industry that they are willing to accept. The special character of this project is the exploration of the senior consumer opinion that is too often overlooked.
The European food industry is going through changes we have never seen before. The Faculty of Engineering of the University of Szeged is the only Hungarian participant of the European cooperation to study sustainable and eco-friendly production of safe and healthy food in circular flow with the help of digitalization, other innovative technologies and industrial development.
One of the Faculty of Engineering’s experts was the only Hungarian researcher of the EIT Food Foresight researching the possible future scenarios of the agri-food system.
Four months ago, two groups of students of the Faculty of Engineering of SZTE won the two top places in the EIT Food Hackatlon. This was the first time for the student groups of food engineers and mechatronical engineers to take part in the competition of the food industry digitalization. This combination of economical courses is unique in the Hungarian higher education system.
EIT Food:
EIT Food is Europe’s largest innovative cooperation with the largest scale of the food industry. Its main objective is to make the food industry sustainable. The goal is to produce safe and healthy food for consumers in a transparent and reliable way. Digitalization of the food industry, waste reduction, development of food processing technologies, production of food that ensures a balanced diet, studying of consumers’ opinions, sustainable agricultural production and processing are only some of the aims of EIT Food.
Universities participating in the project:
- Bulgaria: University of Food Technologies, Plovdiv
- Greece: American Farm School Post-Secondary Educational and Training Association (Perrotis College)
- Hungary: University of Szeged
- Italy: University of Bari Aldo Moro
- Lithuania: Kaunas University of Technology
- Poland: Poznan University of Life Sciences
- Romania: Babes-Bolyai University
- Slovakia: Slovak University of Agriculture
- Slovenia: University of Ljubljana
- Spain: University Institute for the Research in Agri-food Resources (INURA), University of Extremadura
