ELVe Prize 2025 awarded

Anke Reibert (25) and Ellen Gronbach (25), both graduates of the Department of Nutritional, Food and Consumer Sciences, have been honoured with the ELVe Young Talent Award 2025 for their outstanding Bachelor's theses. The research centre for nutrition, food and sustainable supply systems (ELVe) at Fulda University of Applied Sciences awards this prize once a year in recognition of excellent social services: benefits provided by students. "We use it to show that theses are a contribution to research that should not be underestimated," explained Dr Catherina Jansen, who hosted the award ceremony as a member of the ELVe steering committee.

AI chatbots in nutritional counselling

Anke Reibert looked at the opportunities and challenges of artificially intelligent chatbots in nutritional counselling. She investigated how nutritionists assess the use of AI in counselling practice and what requirements they place on the systems. This perspective had hardly been researched before.

The award winner managed an online survey with 29 professionals and combined this with a guided interview with a dietitian working in a hospital. The result: the respondents assessed the AI chatbots very differently, but all saw them as a complementary tool. In order to exploit the potential, clear quality standards, further technical developments and accompanying training programmes are required, writes the award winner.

"They have thus defined a clear roadmap for the future integration of AI in nutritional advice," emphasised laudator Professor Dr Jan-Torsten Milde. The computer scientist was impressed by the work not only from a theoretical perspective, but also because of its interdisciplinary added value and its "concrete and usable findings for the further development of AI-supported systems". At the same time, he pointed out the far-reaching effects of generative AI: "We have to draw legal boundaries. Dealing with artificial intelligence from a subject perspective will hopefully lead to the necessary discussions."

Organic food in state canteens?

Ellen Gronbach focussed on a completely different but equally topical topic. She analysed the use of organic food in state canteens and looked at the strategies of the 16 federal states. "Communal catering is becoming increasingly important when it comes to implementing a sustainable food policy," said laudatory speaker Professor Dr Rohtraud Pichner, putting the topic in context.

The award winner analysed documents from the ministries of nutrition and agriculture. She looked at five relevant documents per federal state, chose one to analyse and systematically examined it in terms of objectives, binding nature and governance. The result: there were major differences in the political strategies and measures taken to fund organic food in community catering.

"You have dealt with a very practice-relevant but very complex topic that is not easy to present in the context of a Bachelor's thesis," said Professor Pichner, praising the achievement. The discussion of the methodological approach and the results was very successful and also showed the limitations of the methodology and the support measures. Getting to the heart of such a complex topic in such a precise and coherent way is definitely worthy of an award.

About the ELVe Young Talent Award

For six years now, the ELVe has been awarding the Young Talent Prize for excellent theses that deal with a key topic of the research centre in a pioneering way. This year there were a few innovations: "We have tightened the eye of the needle a little and tightened up the conditions for awarding the prize," says Dr Catherina Jansen. The prizes were awarded in just two categories, namely in scientific and technical specialist fields and in social sciences and business sciences. Each supervisor could only submit one work. As always, the reviews were carried out by independent scientists.