The Taste of Science

In 2004, Dave Arnold founded the Museum of Food and Drink in New York to promote learning about the history and culture of food. In 2005, The International Culinary Center, home of The French Culinary Institute, tapped him to head its new culinary technology department until 2013.

Maxime Bilet is the co-author of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, which received the 2012 Book of the Year Award from the James Beard Foundation and the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ Visionary Achievement, among many other awards. He is also the co-author and of Modernist Cuisine at Home.

Owen Clark is the executive chef at Gwynnett St., where he started as sous chef on the opening team. Clark has cooked in New York City for seven years. Starting his culinary career in a family style Italian restaurant, he decided to enter a culinary program in Boulder at the Culinary School of the Rockies.

Robin Dando, originally from the UK, is a professor at Cornell University. His lab studies the neurotransmitter interactions and signaling events that occur within the mammalian taste system. Our sense of taste is one of the strongest drives that we possess, and is inexorably linked to emotions, memories, and our quality of life.

Wylie Dufresne opened WD-50 in 2003, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. His partners in the venture are Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten and restaurateur Phil Suarez.

Rachel Dutton, Ph.D. is a Bauer fellow at the Harvard University Center for Systems Biology. After receiving her Ph.D. in microbiology from Harvard Medical School, she founded her own lab with the mission of using cheese as a way to understand microbial ecosystems.

Stuart Firestein is the chair of Columbia University’s department of biological sciences where, along with his colleagues, he studies the vertebrate olfactory system, possibly the best chemical detector on the face of the planet.

After rapidly rising through the ranks of some of the world’s finest restaurants, Najat Kaanache “The Pilgrim Chef” continues to demonstrate her culinary skills not only with her creative restaurant concept but also with her tireless passion for culinary innovation, education, and clean food advocacy.

Kent Kirshenbaum is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at New York University. He has appeared on the Food Network, the Cooking Channel, the Science Channel, the Discovery Channel, Sid the Science Kid (PBS), and at the Wellington-on-a-Plate Festival.

Michael Laiskonis was named creative director of New York City’s Institute of Culinary Education in 2012. Previously executive pastry chef at Le Bernardin for eight years, his pastry philosophy manifested itself in a style of desserts that balanced art and science, and contemporary ideas with classic.

Harold McGee writes about the science of food and cooking. He has been named food writer of the year by Bon Appetit magazine, and to the TIME 100, an annual list of the world’s most influential people. He started out studying physics and astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, and then English literature at Yale University.

Amy Rowat is an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Originally from Canada, she studied physics and various other subjects at Mount Allison University and completed her graduate work in Denmark.

César Vega earned his doctorate in food science from the University College Cork in Ireland. His areas of expertise include dairy products, particularly ice cream and yogurt, the physical chemistry of cocoa and chocolate, and the science of cooking.