Observation

1. Culinary Innovation 101Naveen N. Sinha, nsinha@seas.harvard.eduWeitz Lab, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences The target audience for the class is students who are passionate about solving problems and have some basic scientific background. Even if the participants don’t have a strong culinary background or desire to work in the food industry, they will still gain valuable insight into the process of innovation. The objective is to practice a general problem-solving approach that can be applied to any scientific or engineering problem that also has human factors component. In most school systems, students are presented an overly simplified view of the scientific method: question, hypothesis, experiment, results, and discussion. In actual scientific and culinary investigation, the process is more flexible and iterative. The culinary world is a great testing ground for developing problem-solving skills, since the results are tangible and the time-scale for doing experiments is hours or days. Students work in small teams to solve problems for local chefs, over the course of three, month-long cycles. The four-week cycle of observation, ideation, experimentation, and presentation is inspired by design consulting firms like IDEO and Continuum. Examples of previous science/cooking collaborations: Collaboration Example: Clover Food Lab Schedule Objectives Observation What are the most relevant questions for chefs? Ideation How can you combine insights from research scientists, food technologists, professional chefs, and others to answer this question? Experimentation How can you use a shotgun approach to rapidly explore the space of possible variables? Presentation How can you present the results in a way that that is easily accessible to a wide audience, including the original chef? • Grading • Three cycles of: • Restaurant kitchen visit: 3x10% • Overview of kitchen • Specific details • Photos or sketches • Research documentation: 3x10% • Easy for outsider to interpret • Quantitative measurements • Visual record • Public blog post: 3x10% • Clear storyline • Engaging visuals • Scientific explanation • Relevance for chefs • Overall: • Participation: 1x10% • Active in discussion • Meticulous at clean up • Total: 100% About Me I am an Applied Physics PhD candidate in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. I currently pursue various soft matter physics projects in Prof. David Weitz' lab. Collaboration Example: America’s Test Kitchen I started my time in grad school studying bacterial colonies, known as biofilms. Serendipitously, my two research advisers, Prof. David Weitz and Prof. Michael Brenner, were the lecturers for the first Science and Cooking class at Harvard. I was the Head Teaching Fellow the first year and have continued to explore various collaborations between chefs, scientists, and students. Julie Monrad attempts to elucidate the role of key ingredients in baked goods. Dan Souza and Geoff Lukas bake cakes at America’s Test Kitchen to study the effect of moisture content on baking times. Naveen Sinha documents the results. The data are summarized in an Excel spreadsheet. A team of undergrads presents their results at a Radcliffe poster session.