Scientific Methods and Analytics

Full course description

After graduation, you will have to translate and communicate industrial- and consumer relevant questions into innovative scientific research questions, and interpret scientific results for the benefit of product development. This requires thorough insight in the skills which are needed to design, conduct and understand experiments in nutritional sciences. Accordingly, this course is designed to train you in the methodology of scientific (specifically nutritional) studies, and provide you with knowledge on a number of analytical techniques and practical skills, which are essential to conduct scientific intervention trials for the substantiation of for example product benefit claims. A broad view with attention to in vivo, ex vivo and in vitro technologies will be offered. Special attention will be given to epidemiological research. Epidemiology is an important scientific discipline, especially in an industrial setting, where often the methodology and facilities are lacking to conduct large-scale interventions. In this course, we will discuss descriptive epidemiology and develop the skills to find, critically read and judge the quality of scientific literature. All activities will be supported by problem cases, which will be discussed in Problem Based Learning groups. On each of the different topics which are covered, lectures will be provided by academic staff.