The initiative is made up of a consortium of key industry players, startups, research centres and universities from across Europe. It is one of eight Innovation Communities established by the European Institute for Innovation & Technology (EIT), an independent EU body set up in 2008 to drive innovation and entrepreneurship across Europe.
EIT Food aims to collaborate closely with consumers to develop new knowledge and technology-based products and services that will ultimately deliver a healthier and more sustainable lifestyle for all European citizens.
EIT Food has created the RisingFoodStars Association, which serves as an umbrella for high potential agrifood startups and scaleups, to support and nurture a select group of young companies. The Association is a partner of EIT Food and as such allows its members to participate in all EIT Food activities, thus contributing to the delivery of EIT Food’s strategic objectives.
The Program “Master in Food Systems” (MFS) is an integrated graduate degree program organized by academic institutions and industrial partners from across EIT Food pan-European partner network. Its goal is to prepare students to drive a future transformation of the food system and increase the competitiveness of their future employing companies. The MFS program promotes a deep knowledge of the food system as an integrated value chain by providing students with the opportunity to study consecutively at three academic institutions which provide distinctly different semester blocks, each one of them focusing on specific areas of the food system. This is coupled with a partner-mentored project/thesis work and non-academic activities offered by industrial partners.
Department of Food Science is involved in a number of academic paths. In general, students are enrolled at a home university, and spend 2nd and 3rd semester abroad at academic partners in Europe depending on the selected paths before returning to the home university to finalise the academic work in the thesis. The focus areas in the Master can be tailored to the student’s wishes. The main focus areas are Circular food systems, Consumer practices and public engagement, Targeted nutrition and health management, Sustainable production, Food safety, transparency, and traceability, Management of food system innovations, and Innovative food processing. The keywords for the two paths involving AU-FOOD are Future Foods and Food Structure.
