Food industry professionals will gather Monday and Tuesday, May 15-16, at the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena for a conference focused on global opportunities and challenges in nutrition and food technology, marketing and distribution.

The conference, "Innovation in a World Without Borders," will feature an opening address by A.G. Kawamura, California secretary of food and agriculture, and a keynote presentation by Andrew Hargadon, an associate professor of the Graduate School of Management and an expert on innovation in business and technology transfer.

The event is sponsored by UC Davis' California Institute of Food and Agricultural Research and UC Davis Connect.

The international slate of speakers will address issues such as innovation clusters, globalization and California agriculture, the new health emphasis for foods, manufacturing efficiencies for the food industry and food systems in space.

UC Davis faculty members from campus programs in food science, brewing, winemaking, agricultural engineering, nutrigenomics, business management and community development will be among the speakers.

A complete conference program, as well as registration information, is available online at http://www.cifar.ucdavis.edu/.