EPFL - Center for Food Challenges

The Center for Food Challenges is part of EPFL, with the mission to build bold, high-risk, high-reward research initiatives that aims at tackling key societal challenges in the food system space.We aim to overcome them by designing, building, and executing transformative research programs that can radically improve food systems for all.

Mission Design

For each challenge that the Center addresses we:

1. Identify the key  systemic bottlenecks (i.e. why nobody had solved it before)
2. Assess EPFL critical mass & needed competeneces to tackle them
3. Design strategies to solve the challenges ensuring tangible and measurable impact.

One of the reasons that these challenges remain insufficiently addressed is that venture-backed startups and incumbent companies don’t have the economic incentives  to address them as these endeavours are not directly profitable enough.
Moreover, the highly complex nature of these challenges, spanning from biology to sensor engineering, artificial intelligence, medicine, clinical practice, behavioral & social sciences, agriculture, process engineering, and public health require tight coordination across very different disciplines: providing simultaneously new technologies and novel scientific insights involving citizens, farmers, industry leaders, medical experts, and scientists alike, while translating advancements into tangible improvement for the citizens. 

A different level of coordination is required to deliver on all those fronts. 

A dedicated mission-oriented initiative is needed to provide strategic guidance, efficient resource allocation, and focused accountability, while coordinating the research activities of different laboratories coming from very different domains.