It’s my job to find patterns in the ways people talk about food and help them (or you!) communicate about food more effectively. Oftentimes, this means that I’m the person bringing the voices and experiences of eaters into conversations about new crop or product development and other food innovations. Sometimes, this means working on better tools and methods to understand what’s already been said or written, or studying the differences in flavor language between different groups.
I’m currently a research professor at Virginia State University. With the help of excellent undergraduates from across colleges, I run the VSU Sensory Evaluation Lab, which uses feedback from human tasters to support research into the genetics, growing conditions, chemical composition, recipes, or processing of foods or other agricultural products. The human element is essential. After all, how useful is it to accurately quantify flavor compounds if you don’t have an equally good grasp of what they taste like in the end?
I also collaborate with both industry and academic sensory researchers to develop new methods of analyzing language data, and occasionally teach workshops on text analysis or research programming.
If you ferment anything at home or anyone has ever called your food descriptions “evocative”, we should talk.