On March 16th, 2015, the 4th SMART Lecture was delivered by Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Chairman of the Board of Nestlé S.A. The topic “Big Data Challenges and Opportunities for Food and Nutritional Sciences” attracted an audience of some 150 people, among them scientists, students and interested visitors. CeMM’s PhD Students obtained the chance to meet the Austrian businessman with an exceptional career in an industry branch confronted with major societal responsibility challenges in a closed Q&A session prior to his public lecture. 

In his talk, Dr. Brabeck-Letmathe stated Nestlé´s position as a worldwide player in the food industry slowly changing into an industry increasingly considering health and wellness as part of the equation. His talk was a plea for a global cultural change elevating nutrition to the status of an all-important science. For Brabeck-Letmathe this goes beyond measures such as reduction of sugar and salt in Nestlé´s products but rather is a constant commitment to healthier products. Most importantly, he argued that research in nutrition sciences should be a priority to help disease prevention and presented some exemplary research projects involving the Nestlé flagship research institute NIHS located on the EPFL campus in Lausanne, Switzerland. Genes, diet and lifestyle appear to concur in a matter that is unique for each individual at each time point of an individual’s life, creating the concept of “precision nutrition” to match precision medicine. We thank Peter Brabeck-Letmathe for his visit and interesting talk.