InformPack explores the cross-cultural variations that exist amongst consumers in terms of awareness, information gaps, issues and attitudes towards food packaging as related to product choice upon purchase and disposal patterns at home and on the go. Findings are used to create actions, tools, and strategies to influence public behaviour and bring forward solutions to enable transition to a more sustainable European food-packaging ecosystem. These include: (i) building country-based, tailored consumer-centric engagement activities and incentive strategies based on facts and science provided by packaging experts, and (ii) generating insights that can be leveraged for targeted innovative actions in the area of food packaging, reflecting issues, public demands and industry needs in each country. Having explored Greece and the United Kingdom in 2021, and Spain and Poland in 2022, the project now focuses in 2023-2024 period on the following countries: France, Finland, Italy, Germany, and Denmark.

“The Food Systems Masters of Science project is developing top talent for the food sector, by training the leaders of the future. Organised by leading academic institutions and industrial partners from across EIT Food’s partner network, this mobility programme encourages its participants to drive a future transformation of the food system and increase the competitiveness of the companies they choose to work for. The programme places a strong emphasis on entrepreneurial education alongside multidisciplinary scientific/technological understanding of the food system and strategies to address current and future sustainability challenges.”

Combatting frauds on identity and travel documents is a key mission of law enforcement agencies and border guards. Industries have been working on new means to combat frauds on identity, and public authorities are using numerous technologies to accomplish their mission, but permanent innovation is required to fight highly skilled defrauders. A number of European innovation projects have tested new ways to combat fraud but few of them reached an operational level. EINSTEIN objectives is to enhance significantly existing public authorities’ means through innovation, building on technologies proven in the labs but not mature for an operational usage yet. EINSTEIN will deliver six applications essential to fight identity frauds: 1) online ID issuance using a secure cloud-based server for real-time biometric quality checks and fraud detection, 2) mobile document and identity checks using commercially available smartphones, 3) document authentication module to detect fraudulent documents, 4) pre-registration for land-border crossings including biometrics and DTC, 5) EES kiosk with advanced fraud detection using video surveillance, 6) fast track for enrolled travelers using on-the-move face and iris. To ensure TRL7 at a minimum, practitioners will run six different pilot use cases in their own environment. A key objective is also to ensure interoperability and flexibility of all the components developed in the project so that they can be reused in different contexts, possibly by different providers. Design of open, well-defined, standardized interfaces will allow achieving this objective. Privacy being an essential concern of all European citizens and governments, EINSTEIN will take into account privacy-by-design principles, developing flexible components to ease their customization in order to meet not only the European legislation on data protection but also national legislations on this matter, which vary significantly from one country to the other.

Built upon comprehensive market analysis and industry consultation, this activity establishes the EIT Food Assessment Services is the only organisation in the agrifood sector in Europe which provides an internationally recognised standard in professional learner certification through compliance with ISO 17024. Underpinned by the EIT Food Competency Framework, and carrying the EIT Label for non-degree education and training, it will address the lack of a pan-EU certification scheme for professional education to stimulate and facilitate fast, mutual transfer of knowledge out of local best practice and research. This vision for professionally validated competencies across the sector will be realised by the implementation of EIT Food Assessment Services’ rigorous, quality management system, overseen and approved by independent experts, for the certification of learning achievement of participants of professional education. This certification of competencies will guarantee that every participant carrying a EIT Food Certificate meets a genuine, sector-evidenced competency which ensures high professionality in the particular field. The independence and quality management of the certification processes and identification of sector requirements to meet a genuine market need for enhanced food system specific competencies, leadership, communication, and entrepreneurship aimed specifically at individuals aspiring to the most senior roles, will be guaranteed through the use of an Expert panel, the so called Learning & Assessment Advisory Board, drawn from across the sector, representing industry experts, educators, SMEs, and research institutes. This Advisory Board will be responsible for EIT Food Assessment as well as for the associated EIT Food Learning Services. In this way, it is ensured that the training content and the examination content correspond to current market needs on the one hand, and that the link between the teaching and the examination is present on the other hand, without jeopardizing the independence and impartiality of the certification decision. Assessment and certification?(in line with ISO 17024 guidelines) attached to the professional training of EIT Food Learning Services provides an independent gauge for the quality of that education and an official mechanism for recognition of the investment that learners and their companies have made in their development resulting in a better educated cohort of European in-work food professionals to enable transformation of the sector.

In this 2023 Food Solutions programme within the focus area of Protein Diversification, the focus is on students designing and developing a new food sensation and structure based on a maximum of 2 protein sources. Through the programme, students will gain a detailed understanding of developing a product that is beyond the norm of a protein bar and achieves the 'bliss point' between taste and protein content. This will then be linked with the I&E Spine of the programme to develop an effective plan that will be used in the marketing and communication of their proposition. Students will also be supported during the programme by industry / research mentors and specialist academics to produce a final business plan and pitch.