The KTP between Queen's University Belfast and the business Bia Analytical Ltd. has been given funding by UKRI in order to develop, apply, and embed cutting-edge software engineering and statistical modelling techniques to the model development and validation processes for food authenticity tests.

Dr Charles Gillan and Dr Lisa McFetridge are the academic partners at QUB, and both are members of the DSSC group at ECIT.

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques, the chemometrics project analyses infrared reflectance spectra obtained from food samples. These methods allow for improved detection of compounds in samples and, as a result, detection of contaminants, if they exist. The initial focus was on spices such as cinnamon, oregano, and sage.

The availability of the Kelvin-2 Tier-2 HPC system at QUB, particularly its GPUs, which are well suited to the mathematical methods used, underpins the research.