ASSET 2011

Dr Cannavan has more than 20 years’ experience working in food safety and the control of chemical contaminants in food. He joined IAEA in 2001 and in his current post is involved in the development and transfer to IAEA and FAO member states of methods to control food contaminants, applied research to underpin international guidelines and standards, and coordination and technical management of international research and capacity building projects in food safety and quality, food traceability and authenticity, and good agricultural practices. He is currently involved in an advisory capacity or as a research partner in several EU FP 6 and FP 7 projects, including BioCop, CONffIDENCE and ProSafeBeef, and is a member of the scientific committees of a number of major international conferences, including EuroResidue VII and SaskVal II.

He is an Honours graduate in Biological Sciences from the University of Ulster and completed his PhD thesis on analytical chemistry applied to the detection and control of veterinary drug residues in food at Queen’s University Belfast in 1999.

His main research interests lie in the application of fingerprint spectroscopic techniques (mainly near infrared and mid-infrared) and multivariate data analysis to the rapid and non-destructive measurement of food quality. He has been a member of American Association for Cereal Chemistry International for most of his working career and was elected to the AACCI Board of Directors in 2009. He has participated widely in EU research projects (QUEST, FAIM, STAFANIR, FLAIR-FLOW EUROPE, TRACE) at both research and project management levels, has experience as an evaluator of EU project submissions and has coordinated or participated in a number of  nationally-funded projects. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, 88 technical publications and has contributed 10 book chapters.

Dr Simon Kelly leads a research team in the Contaminants and Authenticity Programme at the Food and Environment Reserach Agency (FERA, Sand Hutton, York).

He is actively involved in applying stable isotope and elemental analysis to determine the geographical and production origin of foods and other materials and exploring the links between environmental factors and food composition. His research interests also include the application of istopically labelled pollutants in Brownfield sites to monitor natural attenuation; the application of metabolomic analysis in food origin assignment and forensic applications of stable isotope analysis.

Dr Kelly is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal 'Food Chemistry' and has acted as a consultant to the joint Food and Agriculture Organisation/International Atomic Energy Association Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture.

Simon gained his degree in Chemistry from Anglia Polytechnic in 1992 and completed his PhD in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia in 2002, where he now holda and honorary lectureship. He has been actively involved in applying isotope ratio mass spectrometry to Food Authentication since 1992 and has previously held positions at the Central Science Laboratory and the Institute of Food Research.

Dr Lindsay also implements and overseas numerous International interdisciplinary research programs, particularly with countries within Europe.  He worked for the CSIRO, Sydney Australia, before becoming a Professor at teh University of Florida.  His research has focussed on various aspects of food safety, including the role of bacterial toxins in disease.  He is a Fellow of the American Society for Microbiology (FAAM); holds Professorships at the University of Florida; is a member of the Editorial Board for Critical Reviews in Microbiology; and has been Chair/Member of various National and International Food Safety Committees, including various Review Panels.  Dr Lindsay obtained his BSc (Honors) and PhD from the ANU, Canberra, Australia.

Michel Nielen studied pharmacy and analytical chemistry at Leiden University and did his PhD in analytical chemistry at the Free University of Amsterdam. He was head of the gas chromatography and dioxin group at the analytical environmental chemistry department of TNO, and head of the mass spectrometry and chromatography groups at Akzo Nobel research in Arnhem. He has been active in food analysis since 2000. His current research interest is in the coupling of biorecognition-based screening assays and mass spectrometry, aiming at the early detection of emerging bioactive food contaminants.

Dr Nielen is author of 120 peer-reviewed publications, President of the Dutch Society for Mass Spectrometry, and co-chairman and co-organiser of the bi-annual International Symposia on Recent Advances in Food Analysis in Prague.

Dr Gaud Pinel obtained her PhD in Food Science in 2001. Since 2002 she has been working as a scientist in LABERCA (French National Reference Laboratory for growth promoters and some environmental chemical contaminants (Dioxines, PAHs, melamine etc) in food); her research activity is devoted to Chemical Food Safety issues.

In particular, she acts as Scientific Advisor Deputy in the laboratory and is involved in the management of research projects linked to growth promoters. She has contributed to significant advances in the detection of recombinant growth hormone abuse in lactating cows and in racing horses, as well as to the establishment of criteria to distinguish between situations of frauds and natural occurrence of certain substances (natural steroid hormones, thyrostats). In 2009, she obtained a second PhD in Analytical Chemistry dedicated to Food Safety issues. Her competences have recently enlarged from targeted mass spectrometric approaches to more global and untargeted strategies such as metabolomic to study the effect of growth promoters and discover biomarkers of anabolic practices. She has published more than 25 peer-reviewed papers in the field.

He is assistant coordinator of the European collaborative FP7 research project CONffIDENCE (developing rapid tests for chemical contaminants in food and feed) and coordinator of the FP7 project NanoLyse (Analytical methods for detection and characterisation of engineered nanoparticles in food). His main research interests are in the area of trace determination of organic residues and contaminants by means of mass spectrometry and biosensor technology. This spectrum was recently extended to the analysis of nanoparticles in food.

At Eurofins | Wiertz-Eggert-Jörissen (Hamburg/Germany), part of the international Eurofins Scientific group, he was responsible for coordination and management of research and development activities for the analysis of residues and contaminants. Furthermore, he was head of the Eurofins Technology Transfer and Training Centre.

Dr Stefan Weigel graduated in Chemistry at the University of Hamburg/Germany where he also obtained a PhD in Analytical Chemistry, working on the ultra-trace analysis of organic contaminants in marine environments, mainly North Sea, with focus on occurrence, distribution and transformation of residues of pharmaceuticals.

Professor Han obtained her PhD in Agricultural Engineering at China Agricultural University (CAU) in 1990. Since 1990, she has been working in CAU for scientific research, teaching and research projects management. She leads a research team in the NIRS analysis for animal protein and biomass materials in CAU and has published more than 30 peer-reviewed papers in the field. She is currently involved in an EU FP 7 project, namely Quality and Safety of Feeds and Food for Europe (QSAFFE).

Prof. Hajslova has participated in many international and national projects at both research and project management levels: 5th EU Framework program (FIRE, STAMPS), 6th EU Framework program (TRACE, BioCop, HEATOX, QUALITYLOWINPUTFOOD), COST. Currently, she is a member of 4 consortia of EU collaborative projects of the 7th Framework program (QSAFFE, NANOLYSE, CONffIDENCE, PERFOOD). She has participated in many other international research activities and has established close collaboration with many institutions, including the UN´s WHO and FAO, and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. She is a member of the international editorial board of the journal Food Additives and Contaminants. She is also national delegate for EU 7th Framework Research Program Committee. As the chairwomen, she had a key input in establishing a series of very reputable international symposia “Recent Advances in Food Analysis” in 2001-2009

Liz graduated at a veterinarian from the University of Sydney, Australia. She started her career in private clinical practice, working in rural practices in both Australia and the UK. She later worked in Botswana, first in the national veterinary laboratory heading up the virology diagnostics and then running a large government field division in the Central Kalahari region. In 2000 she took up a posting with the UK Department for International Development (DfID) at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome. In 2003, after completing a degree in Agricultural Economics at the University of Reading, she became an Assistant Secretary in the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) in Northern Ireland, first as Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer providing professional veterinary advice within the department, and then as Director of Animal Health and Welfare Policy leading on all aspects of animal health and welfare policy development in Northern Ireland. She joined the FSA in December 2008.

In 2004 he was awarded an MVM degree for his research project on Irish organic dairy farming. He was appointed as Chief Specialist in Veterinary Public Health with the Food Safety Authority of Ireland in 2005. This role with Ireland’s central competent authority for food regulation involved a complex and varying blend of scientific risk assessment and regulatory risk management, along with of art of risk communication. In 2006, he achieved Diplomate status with the European College of Veterinary Public Health, to become a European Veterinary Specialist Food Science. Since 2007he has functioned as a national expert on several working groups of The European Food Safety Authority, examining the prevalence of  zoonotic pathogens in the EU food-chain. Since 2008 Mr. O’ Mahony has worked as Authority Member on the Executive Board of the SFPA. This is wide-ranging role in the strategic oversight and day-to-day management of  Ireland’s Competent Authority for Sea-Fisheries Conservation Sea-food Safety legislation.