Master of Science in Bioscience Engineering: Food Science and Nutrition
High-quality foods that are at once safe, healthy and sustainable: this is our study programme’s main focus. Supply and demand for foods is in constant evolution, as is society. The food chain is in transition: it diversifies and reorganizes itself on a local as well as an international level.
What
Food transition is in full swing: how will we be able to feed a world population of nearly 10 billion without exceeding our planet’s resources? The protein transition with a greater focus on vegetarian food or alternative proteins; the demand for healthier and more personalized food containing less sugar, salt, fat or additives; sustainability transition with eye for biodiversity, authenticity and a wakefulness against contaminants and food fraud. Current challenges are technical innovations with a focus on mild preservation techniques and a striving towards less food waste in combination with (more) sustainable packaging.
The Master of Science in Bioscience Engineering: Food Science and Nutrition is an engineering programme with a focus on the (bio)technological, (physio)chemical, microbiological, and nutritional aspects of food in combination with an accrued knowledge of the supply sectors. Not only do we train our Master’s students to understand the various processes raw materials (sourced from biotechnology, circular processes or conventional agriculture) undergo during the food production, conservation and preparation processes, we also train them to look at these processes in a quantitative manner and to optimize them further. In addition, the programme wants to further contextualize the field of food and nutrition with a focus on quality management and risk analysis, consumer behaviour and packaging technology. We also attach great importance to our students’ acquiring insight into the relation between food and health via the programme, in order to separate truths from untruths in the endless information flow on food and nutrition. These insights can help them guide others towards ‘food literacy’. We stimulate our students to put into practice their acquired knowledge in a creative, targeted and innovative fashion, e.g. for international policy support on sustainable food and health, or research into new concepts for the food sector as part of a bio-based economy.
Remarks
Our engineering programme on food science and nutrition is unique in Flanders!
For whom
The admission requirements vary. Depending on your prior education, you are either able to enrol directly, or there are additional requirements.
Structure
The Master of Science in Bioscience Engineering: Food Science and Nutrition curriculum builds on the basic disciplines and engineering skills taught in the Bachelor’s programme. The first year of the Master’s programme contains more specific food-oriented course units (among other things, e.g. Food Technology, Human Nutrition, Biochemical and Functional Analysis of Foods). Course units like e.g. Food Regulation, Quality Management and Risk Analysis and Consumer Behaviour offer a broadening scope. The programme offers an integrative approach to the sustainability of the food system, the role of food in society and the international aspects of the discipline. The second year offers more freedom to choose electives that fit the purpose of the Master’s dissertation, or to conduct the Master’s dissertation research abroad. The course unit ‘Product Innovation in the Food Industry’ integrates all the knowledge and skills acquired throughout the programme. In multidisciplinary teams, students are asked to develop an innovative article of food hands-on, capitalizing on the food transition.
The Faculty of Bioscience Engineering is highly international. As such it is a hub for meeting students and cultures from all over the world. Additionally, there are several ways to gain experience abroad. You can, for example, participate in an exchange programme during the Master’s programme. A work placement abroad is also one of the possibilities. In addition, you can go abroad for a period of time as part of your Master’s dissertation. For programme-specific information, please visit www.ugent.be/bw/nl/voor-studenten/buitenland.
Labour Market
Bioengineers with a specialization in food science and nutrition contribute to a sustainable transition in our food systems. The programme prepares students for a career in the field of food science, in particular the high-tech food industry and their suppliers (e.g. packaging, ingredients, equipment, biotechnology) and related sectors such as the bioindustry, the pharmaceutical and animal nutrition sectors. Our graduates find employment in companies as R&D managers, quality managers, process engineers or packaging engineers. In Belgium and Europe, the food industry is still the largest industrial employer. Other options include (international) policy-making on food strategies, NGOs (consumer and sector organizations) or research institutions working in the field of nutrition and health. Bioengineers also increasingly set up their own enterprise (e.g. production of unique food stuffs, consultancy).
Find out where our graduates work (Dutch only) and take a look at our alumni’s highly diverse profiles.
Quality Assurance
At Ghent University, we strive to educate people who dare to think about the challenges of tomorrow. For that purpose, we provide education that is embedded in six strategic objectives: Think Broadly, Keep Researching, Cultivate Talent, Contribute, Extend Horizons, Opt for Quality.
Ghent University continuously focuses on quality assurance and quality culture. The Ghent University's quality assurance system offers information on each study programme’s unique selling points, and on its strengths and weaknesses with regard to quality assurance.
More information:
Unique Selling Points
- Knowledge creation: in our programme we encourage students to apply the acquired knowledge on food sciences and nutrition in a creative, targeted and innovative way in the development of new concepts (i.e. process and product development), all the while taking sustainability aspects into account.
- Quantitative thinking: our study programme not only aims at understanding the processes that take place in a food chain, and the relationship between food and health, but also at being able to describe them quantitatively, to predict and optimise them further.
- Talent development: our students have a great deal of freedom in tailoring their curriculum to their own interests. The curriculum leaves room for a work placement, international exchange or entrepreneurship. Our graduates are flexibly employable and specialised Masters who can set priorities and are able to manage a multitude of tasks, and to set priorities.
- Independent thought: we train our students to become critical professionals who can function independently in a wide range of sectors and industrial positions, in research and development, in civil society sectors concerned with nutrition and health, in government policy and foreign aid. Availing ourselves of active learning methods (e.g. in tutorials and in developing the Master’s dissertation), we also teach our students an attitude of lifelong learning and of academic reasoning in a multidisciplinary context.
- Application-oriented: graduates value our programme as specific and socially relevant. Classes often link back to current affairs or current academic research. By means of guest speakers or company visits, tutorials and assignments, we clarify how theoretical knowledge dovetails with specific applications in practice. The Master’s dissertation offers students the opportunity to set up their own industrial or socially relevant research within a broader research project.
Strengths
- Our Food Science and Nutrition programme relies on a strong and premium-quality curriculum with a focus on critical thought and research skills. We deliver flexibly employable bioengineers who are well-equipped to tackle the many challenges of our ‘farm to fork’ food system. Food industry is a highly diverse sector. Hence, our graduates find employment as R&D managers, quality managers in smaller or larger, high-tech or more artisanal enterprises. Other options include jobs in policy-making or research institutions, all with good growth prospects. Our alumni also increasingly set up their own production or consultancy companies.
- Dedicated team of lecturers: our programme boasts a dedicated team of lecturers and teaching assistants from a variety of disciplines. They combine a passion for teaching with international research expertise, which ranks among the best in the world (11th place worldwide and 2nd place in Europe according to the Shanghai Ranking 2021 for Food Science & Technology ).
- Room for ‘integrated’ education: with the introduction of the course unit ‘Product Innovation in the Food Industry’, we aim for education that is at once multidisciplinary in character and reflective of the professional field in its specificity. We stimulate the students and lecturers involved to think in a cross-curricular manner.
- Approachability: our lecturers and their team are very approachable and guarantee frequent personal contact with their students. We also encourage communication with the student representatives. This ensures a smooth information flow on the quality of education, and complements information gathered through official student surveys.
- Solid Faculty Education Support Services: our Faculty Education Support Services consist of a support team for Programme Committees. The team keeps continuous quality assurance going and highlights its importance to lecturers. Participation of lecturers and students in our monthly Programme Committee meetings is high. The faculty stimulates a permanent quality culture by organising faculty-wide thematic quality assurance-related workshops, exchanges of good practices among lecturers, … .
Challenges
- There is a large shortage of engineering students who want to support a sustainable food transition. We want more prospective students to find their way to our programme by clearing up specific misconceptions (‘it’s a cooking course’, etc...) and by positioning the programme better. Among other things, the food industry is (also) very high-tech!
- High-quality feedforward and feedback: the Food Sciences and Nutrition programme wants to focus further on clear and constructive feedforward and feedback on assignments, so that students can learn from their performance in a more targeted manner (e.g. what is going well, where is there room for improvement?) in order to adjust their learning process. We will stimulate our students to review their exams more proactively in order to gain more insight into their learning achievements.
- Social commitment and social relevance: the food chain is in full transition: the programme focuses on various sustainability challenges as well as the social relevance of food/nutrition. We want to make these challenges more explicit in several course units and invite students to think about possible solutions together.
This study programme is accredited by the Accreditation Organization of the Netherlands and Flanders (Dutch: NVAO). Accreditation was extended following the positive outcome of the institutional review in 2022. Programme quality was validated by a quality review, i.e. a screening of the Education Monitor by the Education Quality Board. The Quality Assurance Resolution (in Dutch) can be found here.
This information was last updated on 01/02/2023.
In case of questions or suggestions with regard to the publicly available information, please contact the study programme.