Rapid Flavour profiling for sustainable food product development.

食物的味道和香气部分来源于人类对挥发性有机化合物（VOCs）复杂混合物的感知。风味对消费者来说至关重要，但很难定量定义；食品中挥发性有机化合物的数量和类型的微小变化可以深刻地改变消费者对食品的看法。评估香气化学目前是非常耗时和劳动密集型的工作，通常需要由训练有素的人员组成的小组直接对产品逐一取样和评估。这通常是新产品开发中限制速度的一个步骤。约克大学和雀巢糖果公司的联合博士项目将探索最先进的分析仪器，特别是在线和实时质谱，如何帮助自动化风味检测，加速食品行业更可持续的产品测试和开发。在线化学电离质谱将与创新的数据技术（包括机器学习）相结合，为产品的可靠分类和其他关键诊断（如消费者感知和杂质检测）提供新的方法。博士学位将在化学系下属的沃尔夫森大气化学实验室学习。这些实验室为气体和气溶胶测量提供世界领先的分析设施，并在空气、燃烧排放、燃料、个人护理和食品中挥发性有机化合物的检测方面拥有悠久的历史。博士学位将把实验室分析科学与数据驱动方法的发展相结合，并与雀巢（也位于约克）的商业应用和最终用户密切相关。

The flavours and aroma of food derive in part from human sensing of complex mixtures of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Flavour is critical for consumers yet is challenging to define quantitatively; small changes in the amounts and types of VOCs in a foodstuff can profoundly alter how it is perceived by consumers. Evaluating aroma chemistry is currently very time consuming and labour intensive, often needing panels of highly training individuals to directly sample and evaluate products one by one. This is often a rate limiting step in new product development. This joint PhD project between University of York and Nestle Confectionary will explore how state of the art analytical instrumentation, particularly on-line and real-time mass spectrometry, can help automate flavour detection and accelerate more sustainable product testing and development in the food industry. On-line chemical ionisation mass spectrometry will be combined with innovative data techniques, including machine learning, to provide new methods for reliable categorisation of products and other critical diagnostics such as consumer perception and impurity detection. The PhD will be based in the Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories, part of the Department of Chemistry. The labs provide world leading analytical facilities for gas and aerosol measurements and have a long history of leading new developments in the detection of VOCs in air, combustion emissions, fuels, personal care and food products. The PhD will blend periods of laboratory analytical science with development of data driven methods and be linked closely to commercial applications and end user at Nestle (also located in York).