Opportunities to harvest food from the sea will be highlighted at the NutraMara Conference taking place in Dublin this week. NutraMara, the Marine Functional Foods Research Initiative, will host the event to showcase of new ideas and business opportunities from marine bioresources for industry exploitation by the food sector.

The conference will focus on science-based innovations and major technological challenges for market up-take, under the theme of “harnessing marine bioresources for innovations in the food industry”.

Advances in seafood and seaweed processing, the market and regulatory environment for marine-derived functional foods, national and international funding opportunities in the marine bioresource sector and marine-based functional food ingredients will be among the topics discussed.

Speakers at the event will include Dr Helena Abreu of AlgaPlus (Portugal); Dr Sarah Hotchkiss of UK-based CyberColloids; Prof Dr Volker Sieber of the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany; Prof Alan Dobson, of University College Cork; and Dr Catherine Stanton of the Teagasc Food Research Centre.

In addition an exhibition at the RDS will showcase innovative technologies in marine bioresources for the food industry.

Elsewhere, the Visualise your World conference is taking place in the Aviva Stadium in Dublin on Thursday. The free conference will examine visual analytics, cloud platforms and big data.

Europcar Ireland business development director Colm Brady will discuss how analytics drive operational excellence, while John Callan, senior director of global product marketing at QlikTech, will give a talk about modern analytics for the digital world.