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Food Science


Vision and objective of the PhD education at the Department of Food Science
The Department of Food Science aims to provide a PhD degree in Food Science at the highest international level. This requires dedicated PhD students and supervisors as well as a fine working environment. The Department of Food Science considers the PhD programme to be an important part of the research programme and supports and encourages the facilitation of an inspiring environment for the PhD students.


The Food Science PhD programme
The department carries out research in the whole food production chain to enable management of food quality characteristics of significance for consumer perception, nutritional and health quality of the raw material and the suitability for further processing. The research provides new knowledge concerning the sustainable production and quality of fruits, vegetables, ornamentals, dairy, meat and egg products and forms the basis for dissemination of knowledge at the highest level within the area.

Major research areas related to fruit, vegetable and ornamental research:

  • Cultivation techniques
  • Physiology
  • Crop quality
  • Postharvest performance
  • Global changes and plant food production
  • Product development
  • Organic production


Major research areas related to dairy, meat and egg research:

  • Feeding strategies and quality of dairy, meat and egg products
  • Genetics and quality of dairy, meat and egg products
  • Animal well-fare and quality of dairy, meat and egg products
  • In vitro cell studies - both muscle and intestinal cells for studying bioactivity of food
  • Product development
  • Organic production


Research in food science often takes place in close cooperation with leading food, crop and biotechnology companies beside internationally acknowledged universities and research centres. This set-up provides good opportunities for students to cooperate both with industry and/or the international research community.


Research facilities
The department has modern research and experimental facilities and equipment for a wide range of physiological and technical experiments: Field and stable facilities, state-of-art greenhouses, controlled environments, storage rooms and in vitro laboratories.

The analytical equipment includes: HPLC, GC-MS, Q-TOF, iontrap, Maldi TOF/TOF, high- and low field NMR, ESR, Chromatography equipment, DSC, FTIR and facilities for sensory science and state-of-art equipped photosynthesis and root laboratories.



The department is organized in six science teams

PhD students are assigned to the team where the project most naturally belong. Several of our PhD projects will often involve collaboration between different teams and exchange of different competences. A focus of the scientific environment at Department of Food Science is knowledge sharing and dissemination of knowledge.


Working environment
Around 55 PhD students are currently working at the Department of Food Science. They have very different backgrounds both scientifically and culturally. Besides the main supervisor, a laboratory technician, another scientist from the department or a postdoc or PhD student might be assigned to the PhD student.


Internationalization
A focus area is to incorporate a change of environment, preferably a stay abroad, during the PhD study period. Furthermore, the PhD student is expected minimum once to present results from his/her PhD project at an international conference.



National and international cooperation
The science teams at Department of Food Science have many different national and international collaboration partners. Find a list of the present collaboration partners at the website under each science team.


Employment after graduation
Examples include: Department of Food Science (AU), Eurofins, Aarhus Hospital, Hamlet Protein, Arla Foods, AAK, SPX Flow Technology, Chr. Hansen, Dupont, iNANO (AU), Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics (AU), Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology (SDU).

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