Accompanied by faculty members, graduate students and researchers, Larry Vanderhoef, chancellor of the University of California, Davis, will travel this month to China to co-host an international food science conference and meet with UC Davis alumni. Vanderhoef will preside over the 4th International Conference of Food Science and Technology along with Kemei Wei, president of Fuzhou University, and Shengming Huang, secretary general of the National Association of Food Industry in China. The conference will be held Oct. 17-20 in Wuxi, located on Lake Tai in eastern China. It will include 250 participants from the around the world who will exchange new ideas and research findings related to food quality and security, natural resources and environmental preservation. Those attending the conference hope to develop new international collaborations in all aspects of food science. Accompanying Vanderhoef will be Bill Lacy, UC Davis vice provost of University Outreach and International Programs, who will take an extended tour of China guided by Xi Hou, a researcher in the campus's agronomy and range science department. Other UC Davis conference participants will include six faculty members, five graduate students and two postdoctoral researchers. Plenary speaker for the conference will be Mary Schmidl, president of the Institute of Food Technologists and a UC Davis alumna. Some of the topics to be discussed at the conference include new food products, genetically modified foods, food processing and packaging, and environmental concerns related to food processing. The conference was initiated by John Whitaker, professor emeritus of food science and technology at UC Davis, and Xiaolin Ding, former president of the Wuxi University of Light Industry.