This award supports a workshop on computational and engineering approaches to measuring eating behavior and nutrition. The workshop brings together investigators, policy makers and biomedical researchers to develop a multidisciplinary future in nutrition and eating behavior assessment. To date, the biomedical community is still measuring nutrition and eating behavior using either 24-hour recall or having people come to the hospital so that food can be rationed and measured precisely. The use of technology is limited and the computing and engineering community have struggled with targeting the correct behaviors (e.g., food purchases versus time chewing) and units of measures (micronutrients versus time chewing). Thus, the tools being developed do not match the needs and does not advance the scientific community as a whole. To develop effective models and methods, ultimately requires the collaboration of diverse researchers who normally do not talk together nor attend similar conferences nor read the same academic literature.
Eating behavior and nutrition has long been a focus of the computing and engineering communities because they are rich with exciting technical challenges. For example, understanding food intake at a granular level will likely require advances in computer vision, optics and/chemical engineering. Thus, this workshop will bring together those who are building new methods and tools with those who will use them to create a research plan for the future of these diverse research groups.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
