Job opportunity at Institut Paul Bocuse – Research assistant

Job opportunity at Institut Paul Bocuse Research Center – Lyon, France

Research assistant

The post-holder will work on a funded project entitled ‘The impact of herbs and spices on increasing legumes intake and reducing salt through changing the hedonic factors in meals’
Along the increasing global population growth comes the challenge to ensure quality food, in sufficient quantity and with respect to the environment. Despite the well-documented health benefits of legume consumption, the actual intake of legumes remains low owing to people’s preferences for tasty foods. The predominant role of spices and herbs is flavour enhancement. Flavouring of foods using blends of natural herbs and spices (H&S) is a preferred approach to also reduce salt as it results in a clean label product, avoiding inclusion and declaration of chemical compounds. By careful reformulation using H&S, the sensory characteristics and consumer acceptability of low salt legume based products could be improved or maintained. However, studies in this area are limited. This project will explore the strategies increasing the legume intake via the use of H&S to increase hedonic components using two approaches including 1) development of dishes/recipes based on legumes and the appropriate H&S and 2) assessment of sensory perceptions/liking and food consumption.
The project begins on March 2018 and the post holder will work on the implementation and analysis of the field studies.

Requirements
The successful candidate for this fixed term project will be required to:

  • conduct experiments (participant recruitment / sensory food consumption testing); they will have access to guidance and direct supervision from other members of staff, but may be required to operate with some level of independence
  • collect and record data from experiments
  • make some limited contribution to the design of the experiments, or amendment to protocols; this will be done in consultation with a senior project team member
  • analyse data that is collected
  • write up the reports and results of their research work for publications
  • be responsible for the maintenance of supplies for the project and order consumables from suppliers to ensure that the project is able to operate effectively, efficiently and without delay
  • take responsibility for the administrative work related to their research

Those who are interested in working in this exciting project, learning new tools, and broaden their knowledge in the area of eating behaviour are encouraged to apply. Please send the following application documents merged in one PDF document to anestis.dougkas@institutpaulbocuse.com
Using ‘Research assistant application IPB’ as ‘subject’ of your e mail

Starting time:
The position is available as soon as possible and is limited to 6 months with the possibility of an extension for a further 6-month period
Closing date for applications is March 23rd 2018
Interviews will take place week commencing April 2nd 2018
Informal requires are strongly encouraged and can be addressed to
Dr Anestis Dougkas: anestis.dougkas@institutpaulbocuse.com

Further information

Share this