News

The Science Atlantic Nutrition and Foods Division Annual Conference (SANFCon) brings together budding scientists with people established in nutrition and food sciences in the Atlantic provinces. The conference is a place to practice, pitch, and engage in mentorship while exchanging new ideas, research, and practical solutions to problems in the field.

This year, the conference was co-hosted by Dalhousie University and Mount Saint Vincent University with the theme of “Nutrition and Food as Medicine”. The conference featured four distinguished invited speakers, 17 oral presentations and 22 three-minute style presentations of undergraduate and graduate students.

The goal of the SANF conference is to provide undergraduate and graduate students with an opportunity to present their research and attend presentations from keynote speakers. This conference also gives students an opportunity to connect and network with other students and faculty from universities across Atlantic Canada to immerse them further in the disciplines of food and nutrition science.

Cindy Yu received the first place award for her three-minute presentation of her doctoral thesis research titled “Berries vs. fatty liver: How flavonoids activate the body’s defense system”.

Master’s student Chandrika Chathurvedi was recognized with third place in the graduate students’ oral presentation for her presentation on “ Turning food waste into value: Optimizing sulforaphane extraction from upcycled broccoli using response surface methodology”.

Kavindya Samarakoon was awarded first place in the Graduate students’ oral presentation competition for her research on “Development of novel functional food ingredients by microbial biotransformation of grape seeds”.  Kavindya is in her second year of the Ph.D. program.

All three students are supervised by Dr. Vasantha Rupasinghe, professor and Arthur B. McDonald Chair of Research Excellence of the Department of Plant, Food, and Environmental Sciences.

Congratulations to all!