Rethinking Food Systems for People, Animals and the Environment 2026

Welcome to AIMday Food Systems

Food systems are under growing pressure: climate change, resource scarcity, social inequality, and shifting consumption patterns are challenging businesses, public authorities and organisations alike. How we produce, process, distribute and consume food has far-reaching consequences – ecologically, economically and socially. These challenges are complex and interconnected; no single organisation can tackle them alone.

Organisations need solutions that work in the real world. Research brings cutting-edge knowledge, independent expertise and the ability to explore questions in depth. AIMday Food Systems creates a unique space where these two worlds meet.

AIMday Food Systems provides a focused opportunity to:

• Explore solutions to pressing real-world food system challenges
• Connect with organisations and like-minded researchers from diverse backgrounds
• Spark collaborations that can lead to lasting, sustainable change

If you are a researcher that wants to move from ambition to action, AIMday Food Systems is your opportunity to be part of the conversation – and the solution.

How to participate

Organisations from the private and public sectors, as well as civil society, have submitted 26 real-world challenges they are facing. Researchers can now register to discuss the challenges that best match their interests and expertise.

Each challenge will be explored in a one-hour workshop, providing an opportunity to identify potential solutions and explore opportunities for future collaboration and exchange. Each workshop will bring together the organisation that submitted the challenge with a small, interdisciplinary group of researchers with relevant expertise in an open setting designed to foster dialogue and identify potential pathways forward.

Interested researchers can register and select the challenges they would like to join here. Whether you are an early-career researcher or an established researcher, you are warmly invited to participate.

Registration for organisations to submit challenges has now closed.

Follow-up

At the end of the discussion, specific opportunities for further collaboration and funding options will be discussed (if desired).

The AIMday format: "One question. One table. New perspectives."

The AIMday Food Systems at the University of Bern is co-organised by its Innovation Office, Engaged UniBE and the European University Alliance ENLIGHT.