SciX 2023: A Look at the Monday Morning Oral Session on Food Forensics

From 8:30–10:10 am, an oral session titled “Food Forensics” will be taking place in Southern Pacific A/G. This series of five talks will discuss a variety of spectroscopic techniques being used in food forensics.

At 8:30 am, Ismail Boyaci of The Ohio State University, will initiate the session with a talk titled, “Potential of LIBS in Food Analysis.” This talk will discuss how LIBS could be best utilized in food adulteration applications.

Following this, at 8:50 am, Christopher Bell of The Ohio State University, will give a talk titled, “Optical Trade Space Analysis for Handheld Near-Infrared Spectroscopic Sensors.” Bell’s talk will present an analysis of how small spectroscopic sensors can optimize the design for illumination source, sample handling, and detection of reflected radiation.

Next, at 9:10 am, Luis Rodriguez-Saona of The Ohio State University will give a talk titled, “Bright Path for Spectroscopy Devices to Safeguard Foods.” This talk will discuss food surveillance applications, the challenges frequently faced here, and why vibrational spectroscopy can be a cost-effective tool in meeting these challenges.

The subsequent 9:30 am talk will be led by John Gilmore of Hamamatsu Photonics. The talk, titled, “Near-infrared spectrometers: Overview of state-of-the-art instruments,” will discuss near-infrared vibrational spectroscopy. In particular, Gilmore will touch on how vibrational spectroscopy works as well as the information the technique can provide.

Finally, at 9:50 am, Eunah Lee of Horiba Scientific will give a talk titled, “Microplastics in our Drinking Water - Does the Container Really Matter?” This talk concludes the morning session and goes over a recent experiment where numerous containers holding water were compared to determine the impact the container has on the quality of the drinking water.