Data Management and Analytics Professional Development Group

Mission Statement: To provide a multidisciplinary forum for advancing the application of data management and analytics in food safety and quality.

Meeting Information

IAFP 2024

July 14, 2024

How to Join

Involvement in committees and professional development groups (PDGs) offers Members the opportunity to share a wealth of knowledge and expertise. Members of committees and PDGs are the architects of the Association structure. They plan, develop and institute many of the Association's projects, including workshops, publications and educational sessions. Technical challenges facing the food safety industry are discussed, examined and debated. Members may volunteer to serve on any number of committees or PDGs that plan and implement activities to meet the Association's mission.

Membership on a PDG is voluntary (not by appointment) and may vary from year to year.

IAFP Members can manage their PDG involvement by logging in to the IAFP Web site. At the Member Dashboard, click “Edit Profile.” Your profile has two tabs: Contact Info and Professional Info. Select the Professional Info tab and update the PDGs you would like to participate in. We highly recommend that you contact the PDG chairperson for each group to let them know you have joined their PDG.

Non-members can contact Dina Siedenburg, dsiedenburg@foodprotection.org for more information.

Minutes

Board Responses

2022 Board Response to Recommendations
  1. Would it be possible to ensure that the time for this PDG meeting does not overlap the time of several related PDGs, such as the Advanced Molecular Analytics, Food Safety Assessment and Audit, Microbial Modelling and Risk Analysis.

    Board Response: This will be taken into consideration when scheduling PDG meetings at IAFP 2023.

  2. Would it be possible for PDG Chairs to meet several times throughout the year (e.g., quarterly)?

    Board Response: Agreed. PDG Chairs should meet 2 or 3 times per year in addition to meeting at the Annual Meeting.

Webinars

  • AI in Food Safety Research: A Focus on Algorithms and Their Applications Part 4

    Organized by IAFP's Data Management and Analytics PDG and Student PDG

    In the fast-moving field of artificial intelligence, new algorithms are reported practically every day. This rapid evolution, combined with the voluminous body of literature, can make understanding how to apply AI for food safety research very challenging. In this webinar series, the participants will be introduced to fundamental machine learning algorithms used in food safety research. By the end of the session, participants will have an overview of each models’ mathematical foundation, evaluation metrics, and limitations. Insight on the models’ applications in food safety will be gained via ‘case studies’ from invited speakers’ research. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the session.

    Part 4: Large Language Models for Foodborne Outbreak Tracking/Epidemiology

    Model(s): Large Language Models (LLMs)

    Topics:

    Talk 1: Developing LLMs for food recall prediction and safety enhancement: Georgios Makridis, University of Piraeus, Greece

    Talk 2: Probabilistic models for locating the source of foodborne outbreaks: Abigail Horne, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

    In this webinar, participants will learn about machine learning models used for language and textual analysis in foodborne outbreak epidemiology. Through case-study, we will review the how to select, optimize, evaluate, and apply large language models for tracking and source attribution of foodborne outbreaks.

    Outcomes: By the end of the webinar, participants will gain an understanding of:

    • How large language models work.
    • How to select and fine-tune a LLM for downstream tasks.”
    • How the models are currently being used in food safety.

    Presenters
    • TBD
    • Claire Zoellner, Moderator
  •  AI in Food Safety Research: A Focus on Algorithms and Their Applications Part 3

    Organized by IAFP's Data Management and Analytics PDG and Student PDG

    In the fast-moving field of artificial intelligence, new algorithms are reported practically every day. This rapid evolution, combined with the voluminous body of literature, can make understanding how to apply AI for food safety research very challenging. In this webinar series, the participants will be introduced to fundamental machine learning algorithms used in food safety research. By the end of the session, participants will have an overview of each models’ mathematical foundation, evaluation metrics, and limitations. Insight on the models’ applications in food safety will be gained via ‘case studies’ from invited speakers’ research. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the session.

    Part 3: Neural Networks for Biosensor Image Analysis

    Model(s): RNN,CNN, MLP

    Topics:

    Talk 1: Developing an AI-enabled biosensing pipeline for pathogen detection: Jiyoon Yi, Michigan State University, USA

    Talk 2: Analyzing optical imaging data to quantify foodborne pathogens: Luyao Ma, University of Florida, USA

    In this webinar, participants will learn about machine learning models used for image analysis in food safety research. Through case-study, we will review how to select, optimize, evaluate, and apply neural networks for the analysis of diagnostic imaging used to detect foodborne pathogens.

    Outcomes: By the end of the webinar, participants will gain an understanding of:

    • Traditional machine learning versus deep learning.
    • How neural networks work.
    • Different types of neural networks.
    • How neural networks are currently being used in food safety research.

     

    Presenters
    • Jiyoon Yi, Presenter Michigan State University
    • Luyao Ma, Presenter Florida State University
    • Zhenjiao Du, Moderator
  • AI in Food Safety Research: A Focus on Algorithms and Their Applications Part 2

    Organized by: Data Management and Analytics PDG and Student PDG

    In the fast-moving field of artificial intelligence, new algorithms are reported practically every day. This rapid evolution, combined with the voluminous body of literature, can make understanding how to apply AI for food safety research very challenging. In this webinar series, the participants will be introduced to fundamental machine learning algorithms used in food safety research. By the end of the session, participants will have an overview of each models’ mathematical foundation, evaluation metrics, and limitations. Insight on the models’ applications in food safety will be gained via ‘case studies’ from invited speakers’ research. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the session.

    Part 2: Machine Learning Models for Detecting Adulterants and Food Fraud

    Model(s): tSNE (t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embeding), PCA (Principal Component Analysis), LDA (Linear Discriminant Analysis)

    Topics: 

    Talk 1: Leveraging dimensionality reduction for genomic biomarker discovery

    Talk 2: Comparing models for validating the origins of meat floss: Kuwat Triyana, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia

    In this webinar, participants will learn about unsupervised machine learning models used to study the spoilage and quality of food products. Through case-study, we will review how to select, optimize, evaluate, and apply algorithms such as t-Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (tSNE), Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) in food safety research.

    Outcomes: By the end of the webinar, participants will gain an understanding of:

    1. Unsupervised vs Supervised machine learning.

    2. How to select features for unsupervised machine learning algorithms.

    3. The advantages and limitations of each algorithm.

    4. How the models are currently being used in food safety research.

    Presenters
    • Talk 1: TBD
    • Kuwat Triyana, Presenter Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia
    • Harsimran Kapoor, Moderator
  • AI in Food Safety Research: A Focus on Algorithms and Their Applications Part 1

    Organized by: IAFP's Data Management and Analytics PDG and Student PDG

    In the fast-moving field of artificial intelligence, new algorithms are reported practically every day. This rapid evolution, combined with the voluminous body of literature, can make understanding how to apply AI for food safety research very challenging. In this webinar series, the participants will be introduced to fundamental machine learning algorithms used in food safety research. By the end of the session, participants will have an overview of each models’ mathematical foundation, evaluation metrics, and limitations. Insight on the models’ applications in food safety will be gained via ‘case studies’ from invited speakers’ research. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the session.

    Part 1: Regression and Classification for Predicting Microbial Responses

    Model(s): Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machine, Random Forest Models

    Topics:

    Talk 1: Evaluating algorithms for monitoring E. coli in surface water: Yakov Pachepsky, USDA-ARS, USA

    Talk 2: Comparing machine learning algorithms for genome-based classification of Salmonellaenterica disease severity: Shraddha Karanth/ Abani K. Pradhan, University of Maryland, USA

    Exploring the predictive capability of advanced machine learning in identifying severe disease phenotype in Salmonella enterica. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodres.2021.110817

    In this webinar, participants will learn about machine learning models often used for classifying and quantitatively predicting quantitative microbial responses of foodborne pathogens. Through case-study, we will cover how to select, optimize, evaluate, and apply logistic regression, support vector machine, and random forest models to food safety research.

    Outcomes: By the end of the webinar, participants will gain an understanding of:

    • Each models’ advantages and limitations.
    • What are hyperparameters and how to optimize each model.
    • How to compare the models’ performance using evaluation metrics.
    • How the models are currently being used in food safety research
    Presenters
    • Yakov Pachepsky, Presenter USDA-ARS
    • Matthew Stocker USDA-ARS
    • Shraddha Karanth, Presenter University of Maryland
    • Abani K. Pradhan, Presenter University of Maryland
    • Olivia Haley and Manreet Bhullar, Moderators