Meet the Jury Masami Takeuchi on How a single research project becomes part of global agrifood systems?

Arenberg Doctoral School is proud to invite you to Meet The Jury!

When internationally renowned experts visit KU Leuven as a member of a PhD Examination Committee, we like to seize this opportunity to give this expert a forum to a large audience. All members of Science, Engineering & Technology are most welcome to the Meet The Jury Lectures.

Dr. Masami Takeuchi (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, Italy) will give a lecture on “How a single research project becomes part of global agrifood systems?”.

In global agrifood systems, decision makers frequently pose a deceptively simple question: what does the science tell us to do? Within the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), this question arises repeatedly in discussions with governments seeking to manage food safety risks under conditions of increasing uncertainty. The answer is rarely derived from a single study or a linear pathway from academic publication to policy action. Instead, global food safety decisions emerge from the accumulation of scientific evidence developed over time, often by researchers whose work was not originally intended for immediate application. Food safety research contributes to global agrifood systems as a set of foundational building blocks rather than as standalone solutions. Doctoral research plays a critical role in this process by generating methods, datasets and conceptual frameworks that enable others to reason about risk across diverse contexts. In complex systems, the value of such research lies less in its apparent scale and more in its robustness, transparency and capacity to be integrated with other forms of knowledge. This perspective has become increasingly important as agrifood systems evolve. Climate change is reshaping microbiological risk patterns, while emerging food production systems, including cell based food, precision fermentation, gene editing and modern indoor farming, challenge traditional assumptions about hazards, exposure and control. At the same time, technologies such as whole genome sequencing and artificial intelligence are transforming how data are generated, analysed and interpreted. These developments have not been driven by isolated breakthroughs, but by prior research that connected environmental drivers, biological processes and uncertainty in ways that could later be adapted to new questions. Research that integrates climate change modelling with microbiological risk in dairy systems exemplifies this type of foundational contribution. Rather than seeking to predict specific outbreaks, such work demonstrates how complex interactions can be structured, explored and communicated. By linking climatic variability to microbial behaviour, it supports a shift from reactive responses to anticipatory food safety management, an approach that is increasingly essential under changing environmental conditions. The role of inclusivity is central to the sustainability and resilience of global agrifood systems. Food safety frameworks must operate across countries with highly variable infrastructure, surveillance capacity and data availability. Foundational research that makes assumptions explicit, embraces uncertainty and produces adaptable methods can lower barriers to participation, particularly for low and middle income countries that often experience the greatest exposure to climate related risks. In this way, scientific work contributes not only to knowledge generation but also to capacity development and shared global responsibility. Early career research therefore occupies a pivotal position in global systems. Although the impacts of individual PhD projects are often indirect and delayed, they shape the evidence base upon which future decisions are made. Global agrifood systems are built through the accumulation of such work, connected across disciplines, technologies and contexts. A single PhD project does not change global agrifood systems on its own, but it becomes part of the infrastructure that allows those systems to be governed, adapted and sustained.

Following the lecture, there will be opportunity for young researchers to interact with her.

• Venue: KU Leuven Campus Gent, Building D, Room D002 – Klein auditorium  Flemish Universities
• Date: 25 February 2026 – 13:30-14:30
• Dr. Masami Takeuchi is visiting KU Leuven on the occasion of the PhD defence of Lydia Katsini