Contemporary food research is increasingly configured by a set of tensions that shape the current research priorities, regulatory frameworks, and societal expectations. These tensions arise from the coexistence of legitimate yet competing objectives, including the need to ensure food safety and nutritional adequacy, promoting public health and disease prevention, safeguarding environmental sustainability, and climate neutrality. At the same time, it is essential to guarantee food sensory quality, cultural identity, and security while strengthening supply chain robustness and economic viability across local and global markets. These goals do not simply coexist; they frequently compete, forcing researchers, policymakers, and industry actors to constantly negotiate complex trade-offs among health priorities, environmental constraints, technological innovation, and cultural values.
Moreover, we are living in an era of profound uncertainty, marked by escalating political instability, conflicts, climate-related disruptions, and pandemics, which underscore the urgency of building resilience and adaptability into production and distribution chains. Resilience today entails not only logistical robustness, but also social equity, ethical sourcing, transparency, and trust between institutions and citizens. This scenario is further framed by a profound paradigm shift triggered by the rapid integration of artificial intelligence, big data analytics, automation, and digital infrastructures. These technologies are not merely tools; they are reshaping how knowledge is generated, validated, and communicated. AI also raises critical questions about data governance, bias, intellectual property, and the evolving role of human expertise in scientific inquiry.
Rather than constituting mere constraints, such tensions represent productive sites of inquiry in which new forms of inter- and intradisciplinary knowledge can emerge, fostering the development of knowledge and innovative solutions. The latter emerge not from isolated breakthroughs but from the capacity to integrate perspectives and negotiate complexity.
This workshop, dedicated to future generations of researchers and managers in the food sector, aims to provide a platform for critical reflection on these diverse and seemingly opposing driving forces that are expected to shape the future of research in food science. The aim is to explore how these drivers interact, overlap, and sometimes generate tensions, highlighting the need for integrated approaches capable of addressing complex and multifactorial challenges. The workshop will also encourage discussion on how emerging technologies and interdisciplinary perspectives can support the development of food systems that are not only healthier, but also safer, more secure, sustainable, resilient, and socially responsible. By encouraging dialogue across disciplines and career stages, the workshop intends to foster a more reflexive and responsible research culture.
Maria Cristina Nicoli, Coordinator of the UniUD Scientific Committee of the 30th Workshop on the Developments in the Italian PhD Research on Food Science Technology and Biotechnology