Digital Dining: New Innovations in Food and Technology

PROF. CHARLES SPENCE

Professor Charles Spence is a world-famous experimental psychologist with a specialization in neuroscience-inspired multisensory design. He has worked with many of the world’s largest companies across the globe since establishing the Crossmodal Research Laboratory (CRL) at the Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford University in 1997. Prof. Spence has published over 1,200 academic articles and edited or authored, 16 books including, in 2014, the Prose prize-winning “The perfect meal”, and the international bestseller “Gastrophysics: The new science of eating” (2017; Penguin Viking) – winner of the 2019 Le Grand Prix de la Culture Gastronomique from Académie Internationale de la Gastronomie. His latest book Sensehacking was published in 2021. Much of Prof. Spence’s work focuses on the design of enhanced multisensory food and drink experiences, through collaborations with world-leading chefs, baristas, mixologists, chocolatiers, perfumiers, and the food and beverage, and flavour and fragrance industries. Prof. Spence has worked extensively on the question of how technology will transform our dining/drinking experiences in the future, and has been profiled in The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/02/accounting-for-taste).

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR CARLOS VELASCO

Carlos Velasco is associate professor at the Department of Marketing, BI Norwegian Business School (Norway), where he co-founded the Centre for Multisensory Marketing. Carlos received his D.Phil. in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University, after which he worked in a number of postdoctoral and consulting projects in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. His work is situated at the intersection between Psychology, Marketing, and Human–Computer Interaction, and focuses on understanding, and capitalizing on, our multisensory experiences and their guiding principles. Carlos has published over 100 academic articles in these fields and has authored or edited eight books. Recently, he co-wrote the book "Multisensory experiences: Where the senses meet technology" (Oxford University Press). Carlos has worked with a number of companies from around the world on topics such as multisensory experiences, food and drink, branding, and consumer research. For more information, visit https://carlosvelasco.info/