Soft Matter and Food Sciences share many common features. Gels, emulsions, foams, suspensions, … are typical classes of soft materials investigated in Soft Matter. Foods are obvious examples of soft materials with everyday relevance, and it is well accepted that concepts and methods developed for research on soft condensed matter can serve to understand and study of their complex behavior. Numerical, theoretical and experimental investigations need cover a broad range of complementary space and time scales in order to achieve a complete description of the systems. Furthermore, a common goal of Soft Matter and Food Sciences is the rational design of functional advanced materials. To do so, Soft Matter and Food Sciences develop similar strategies based on the assembly of several building blocks (bio-sourced in food science and also synthetic for soft matter research in general) through either thermodynamic principles of self-assembly or out-of-equilibrium kinetically arrested organization.

Although differences in terms of language still exist, many soft matter physicists have started to work on food-related topics, highlighting the scientific interest of such multidisciplinary approach.

The objectives of this SoftComp topical workshop is to highlight the connection between soft matter and food research through exchange, sharing and broadening of know-how between the two communities.

The schedule of the workshop

The list of the participants

The abstracts of the lectures/key-notes/oral presentations can be found here.

The workshop will last 2.5 days and has been split in three types of contributions :

• Half a day of scientific lectures (4 lectures of 1 hour) where the theoretical background in terms of experimental techniques and/or systems will be recalled. This sequence is needed for a broad audience to share the same concepts and the same language. This sequence is of special interest for PhD students, post-docs and researches new to the area..
• 12 Keynotes of 30 minutes given by invited researchers who will present the state of the art for a range of experimental techniques and  research areas (details regarding the contributors which have been identified so far are given below).
• oral presentations of 20 minutes will be given by selected contributors in research topics that have been introduced by one of the keynotes.
• poster presentations during the coffee breaks.