ESM · Edible Soft Matter

Food and environmental transitions are worldwide major challenges as illustrated by the Farm to Fork Strategy, at the heart of the EU Green Deal, and by the United Nations Development Goals. Sustainable and healthy food requires an urgent shift from a diet rich in animal-based ingredients towards a diet enriched in plant-based ingredients. This is the challenge behind the Edible Soft Matter (ESM) project. Soft matter science has been tremendously successful in tackling complex problems involving multicomponent materials with a wide range of length and time scales and is now recognised as providing unique perspectives to understand the complexity of foods and to design new foods. ESM objective is to train and develop the employability of a new generation of eighteen young researchers, regulators, consultants and project leaders by providing them with a unique expertise in the design, production and quality assessment of innovative plant-based food products. The ESM Doctoral Candidates (DCs) will benefit from an international, interdisciplinary, and cross-sectoral training through research in basic and applied soft matter and food sciences. Through their Individual Research Projects and the network-wide training activities, characterised by a strong involvement of the non-academic partners, they will develop the hard and soft skills needed to face the current challenges related to food and environmental transitions.The consortium includes eleven Beneficiaries (including three from the non-academic sector) from seven countries and eleven Associated Partners (including four from the non-academic sector), with worldwide recognised and complementary expertise in food and soft matter sciences. All DCs will be exposed to both academic and non-academic working environments. ESM objectives are timely and the ESM unique training programme holds a great promise for the advancement of the DCs careers as well as for scientifically, technologically and socially relevant outputs.