Foodborne disease, chemical adulteration, and food fraud are emerging public health threats due to the complex and global nature of our food supply chain. The heightened public awareness of adulterated and contaminated food products has brought increased pressure on governments, health organizations, industry and agriculture from around the world to combat these problems and ensure the safety and authenticity of our food supply. We propose to convene a symposium on Biosensors for Agriculture to address sensor technologies to confront these issues. The symposium will be held in conjunction with the Electrochemical Society?s annual fall meeting in San Francisco. This one day symposium will consist of 1) Invited Presentations describing recent sensor research and organizational roadmaps; 2) a Panel Discussion session to identify technology gaps not being addressed by current efforts; 2) an open forum Research Poster Session; and 4) a Poster Contest to encourage student research on biosensors. This symposium will lead to innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to ensure food safety for consumers.
A symposium on Biosensors for Agriculture was held on October 29th, 2013 in conjunction with the Electrochemical Society’s 224th Annual Fall Meeting in San Francisco, CA. The symposium consisted of 1) Invited Presentations describing recent sensor research and organizational roadmaps; 2) a Panel Discussion session identifying technology gaps not being addressed by current research efforts; 3) an open forum Research Poster Session; and 4) a Poster Contest among student researchers. The goal of this symposium was to develop a roadmap to research priorities for biological and chemical sensor technologies that addressing the needs of the food and agricultural industry to satisfy the growing demands for food safety and quality assurance by consumers and regulatory agencies. This symposium brought together program managers and leading researchers from governmental and academic laboratories involved in food safety research to discuss program priorities and the state-of-the-art in applicable sensor technologies. The research presentations were recorded and posted to the ECS conference website to make this content available to a wider audience. The specific objective of this project was to provide travel grants for graduate students and post-docs to participate in the symposium and to attend the wider ECS conference. Because of this award, 16 students and post-docs received travel grants of $600 to defray the cost of attending the symposium and ECS conference. The symposium offered these young scientists and students the opportunity to share their research, learn about the research of others, and meet with leading scientists, influential government and industry leaders, and their peers. This symposium fostered the exchange of ideas and lead to discussions of future collaborations to meet the industry challenges and improve the safety and quality of our food supply.
