RAFA 2022 Event Preview

The 10th International Symposium on Recent Advances in Food Analysis (RAFA 2022) will take place in Prague, Czech Republic, on 6–9 September 2022.

The RAFA organizers, the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague (UCT Prague, Czech Republic), and Wageningen Food Safety Research (WFSR), part of Wageningen University & Research (The Netherlands), would like to invite food scientists from academia, together with representatives of industry, national and international agencies, control authorities, and governmental and commercial laboratories to attend this event.

The RAFA 2022 symposium will provide an overview of contemporary trends in analytical and bioanalytical strategies in food quality and safety control, and will discuss challenges and novel approaches in food and natural products analysis, including: multi-omics in food analysis; food fraud; forensics and authenticity; organic crops and foodstuffs; bioactivity determination and identification; micro- and nano‑plastics in food; portable on-site food analysis; QA/QC, chemometrics, and big data handling; mycotoxins, marine, and plant toxins in a changing climate; process-induced contaminants; pesticide and veterinary drug residues; food legislation and food control; human biomonitoring and exposure assessment; healthy nutrients & vitamins; environmental contaminants; emerging alternative proteins; allergens and other issues; metals, metalloids, and speciation; cannabinoids in food and supplements; and flavours in food engineering.

Workshops, Seminars, Tutorials, Vendor Seminars, and Exhibition

The conference programme will be accompanied by several satellite events on novel analytical strategies, including workshops on vibrational spectroscopy and chemometrics, and the analysis of contaminants and migrants in circular food production. Other sessions will include tutorials on data quality and smart data handling in food analysis. An interactive seminar will discuss step-by-step strategies for the fast development of smart analytical methods. Furthermore, the EU Reference Laboratories Colloquium are holding a workshop on the experiences, achievements, and challenges addressed by EU reference laboratories.

Vendor seminars and exhibition will be organized by leading companies to introduce recent instrumentation and analytical strategies for advanced food quality and safety control.

Opportunities for Young Scientists

As always, RAFA will offer a platform for young scientists to present their scientific work, with 20% of the contributed oral presentations typically assigned to the next generation. There are opportunities to take advantage of the RAFA 2022 “Student Travel Grants”, and the best poster presentation(s) by a young scientist(s) will be rewarded with the prestigious RAFA Poster Award and sponsored poster award(s).

In summary, RAFA 2022 offers a high-quality scientific programme, with top-quality presentations, stimulating discussions, a series of satellite events, state-of-the-art exhibition, and an attractive social programme. The RAFA 2022 programme will be tailored to provide a lot of opportunities for networking, as well as exploration of the latest results from the food analysis community. More details can be found on the RAFA 2022 website at www.rafa2022.eu

Prof. Jana Hajslova, Prof. Michel Nielen, and Dr. Stefan van Leeuwen, RAFA 2022 chairs