Coffee Conference At UC Davis Tuesday

The university is already home to the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science.

Professor Bruce German with UC Davis' Foods for Health Institute says tomorrow's conference will test the waters on creating a similar institute for coffee.

"The goal is to determine at this stage, it's an early stage, but is there interest across the campus and in the coffee industry to build a center of excellence at the University of California, Davis."

German says a dedicated coffee research center would involving teaching the science behind the beverage to students.

"They would both involve research and teaching. So that we can imagine that we would be teaching students more about coffee."

Tomorrow's conference is open to everyone and will cover topics such as the genetics of coffee, sustainability in coffee growing, and the sensory perception of coffee drinkers.

William Ristenpart is one of the speakers. He's an associate professor of chemical engineering and materials science at UC Davis and spoke on Insight today.

"What we're really trying to do is to: A) raise public awareness of the unresolved scientific issues with regards to coffee and also B) raise awareness of the idea of the possibility of having more academic study to kind of train the next generation of coffee scientists and professionals here at UC Davis."

Ristenpart says the proposed coffee research center would be similar to the university's Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science. The decision on whether to offer a major in coffee science will be up to the university's upper administration.