The food we choose to eat and the way it is produced has mounting consequences to global health, environment, current and future food security and the fabric of society. The outcomes in the form of obesity, hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity and climate change – all warrant a multidisciplinary system-level research approach to unravel the issues as well as to offer sustainable solutions.
Our research in the lab focuses on understanding the interplay between food and nature and the implications of changes in agricultural production and diets to overall sustainability. Combining different disciplines and methodologies we strive to build a comprehensive system-level understanding of the food system and to promote more effective policy tools towards implementing sustainable food systems.
Some examples:
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We study the nutritional contribution of aquatic foods to global food security and assess their overall environmental impacts.
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Using big data and machine learning algorithms we unravel the dynamics of digital food sharing platforms in order to understand their typology and harness them to minimize environmental impacts.
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We use various industrial ecology tools (e.g. LCA, MFA) to understand food system supply chains from production to consumption, identify inefficient 'hotspots', and assess the benefits of corrective interventions.
