Annual Conference 2010
46th Annual Conference and
2010 Future Leaders Forum
June 6-9, 2010
"Linking Agriculture, Nutrition and Health: Opportunities and Challenges for Sustainable Development"
Speakers and Panelists
Laura Birx, USAID, Global Health Bureau
Laura Birx is a Nutrition Advisor in the Global Health Bureau at USAID/Washington. She is part of the USAID teams working on the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative, Feed the Future, and the Global Health Initiative. She is the technical advisor for the global Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance Project 2 (FANTA-2), which works to improve nutrition and food security policies, strategies, and programs through technical support to USAID and its partners.
Prior to joining USAID, she worked for a private foundation in the U.S. that focused on health policy and community development in low-income communities, particularly in immigrant and refugee families. She has a BA from Colby College and an MPH from George Washington University.
Susan D. Bradley, USAID, Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance Bureau
Susan Bradley is a Senior Policy Advisor in USAID's Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA) and Deputy to USAID's Global Food Security Coordinator. Ms. Bradley is also a member of USAID and USG inter-agency food security teams currently working to implement a whole-of-government global food security strategy. Before it was institutionalized as one of the Agency's policy coordination committees, Ms. Bradley was co-Chair of the Agency's Global Food Security Task Force. Ms. Bradley has been with USAID since 1998, and prior to her current position she served as a country backstop officer, a Team Leader, and Acting Chief of Emergency Programs for USAID's Office of Food for Peace.
Ms. Bradley managed USAID's food assistance programming in the Horn of Africa through 3 near-famines, and has served on USG Disaster Assistance Response Teams in Kosovo, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Iraq. Before joining USAID Ms. Bradley worked with a number of non-governmental organizations including CARE International and Doctors Without Borders (Belgium), and she began her work in international assistance as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger. She received her Masters of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University, MD, and her undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Davidson College, N.C.
Nancy Cavallaro, USDA/National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Nancy Cavallaro has been a National Program leader at USDA-CSREES/NIFA since January 2001, leading programs in soil science, watershed science, and climate change. Prior to that she worked for 16 years as a professor of soil science at the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, and before that was a "Profesor-Investigador" at the Graduate College of Chapingo, Mexico. She has a doctorate in soil science from Cornell University.
Maria Elisa Christie, Virginia Tech
Dr. Maria Elisa Christie is Program Director for Women in International Development at Virginia Tech. She has over twenty years of experience in international development and environment working with a variety of development, research, and policy NGOs throughout the developing world and with local, state, and federal governments in the US and Mexico. She has played a key role launching new projects that support international collaboration. Currently, Dr. Christie heads global gender research projects in the Integrated Pest Management Collaborative Research Support Program (IPM CRSP), the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management CRSP, and in Peanut CRSP. Dr. Christie's research focuses on gendered spaces and everyday life in nature/society relations, participatory research methodologies, kitchens and gardens, and women's reciprocity networks.
As Program Director for Women in International Development, Dr. Christie's role is to provide leadership within International Programs to ensure that all projects and programs are gender sensitive and will have a positive effect on the most disadvantaged beneficiaries, many of whom are women, and to work with faculty at Virginia Tech in order to increase their capacity to effectively address gender issues in international research and grant proposals.
Gerald F. Combs, Jr., USDA-Agricultural Research Service
Dr. Combs has a wide interest in Agriculture, Nutrition and Health, particularly in improving the linkage of food production and human health and well being. He is internationally recognized as a leader in nutrition, having published widely and conducted research ranging from basic biochemical studies to human metabolic and clinical investigations as well as serving on USDA strategic planning committees for food security research. He has written two leading text/reference books, The Role of Selenium in Nutrition (Academic Press, 1986) and The Vitamins: Fundamental Aspects in Nutrition and Health (Academic Press, 1992; revised editions in 1998, 2007 and 2011). Combs' education includes a Ph.D. in Nutritional Biochemistry from Cornell University and a M.S. in Entomology (minor: Physiology), also from Cornell University.
His International experience includes extensive work in China and Bangladesh; also Costa Rica, Indonesia, Nepal, Taiwan, Australia, Egypt, Russia, Canada and Germany as well as having lectured in 30 countries. Scientific highlights include 1st to demonstrate anti-carcinogenic efficacy of selenium in humans; 1st to describe endemic rickets in Bangladesh; 1st to conduct a comprehensive study of a community food system in a developing country (Bangladesh); 1st studies of genetic determinants of selenium metabolism; 1st to develop rapid means of measuring selenium in small grains to facilitate commodification of high-selenium grains. Currently, Dr. Combs serves as the Center Director of the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center of the USDA-Agricultural Research Service, where he is also actively pursuing research that addresses the proteomics/metabolomics of selenium in humans, including effects of adiposity.
Owen Cylke, World Wildlife Fund
Owen Cylke is director, WWF Macroeconomics Program Office, which is engaged around issues related to development and the environment, more recently climate, development and the environment. He has been engaged over the past twenty years as a senior policy advisor with the Tata Energy Research Institute, National Environmental Policy Institute, Winrock International and WWF. Earlier he served as president of the Association of Big Eight Universities, a consortium of mid-west research universities. Mr. Cylke has also served as a senior officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Over a twenty five year career there, he served as deputy assistant administrator for Food and Voluntary Assistance, director of the U.S. Economic Assistance Mission to India and deputy director in Afghanistan and Egypt.
He retired with the rank of Career Minister. Mr. Cylke is a graduate of Yale University and the Yale Law School. He served in Ethiopia as a Peace Corps Volunteer at the Haile Selassie I University, Faculty of Law.
Montague W. Demment, University of California, Davis
Dr. Montague W. Demment is Director of the Global Livestock Collaborative Research Support Program, a program funded by USAID and the US university community, and professor of ecology in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the University of California, Davis. He has served in this role since June 1994. Demment oversees and directs the GL-CRSP program. The GL-CRSP involves scientists from 12 US universities and 60 foreign institutions that address issues of food security, trade, environment and policy related to the livestock sector in developing countries. As director Demment is responsible for the Management Entity at UC Davis, that has programmatic and fiscal responsibility for this $5M per year program. He also is responsible to USAID to provide direction and advise on issues related to development particularly with regards to livestock. Demment also serves as Associate Vice President for International Development at APLU where he is focused on the role of higher education in development. He has been involved in advocacy for higher education support for Africa and been instrumental in the creation of APLU's Africa U.S. Higher Education Initiative team on which he continues to serve. Demment conducts his own research on nutritional ecology of herbivores. He teaches two courses in nutrition and ecology and one course in agriculture and environment.
NSF, BARD, BSF, and a number of smaller entities have funded his research program. Demment is past president of AIARD (Association for Agriculture and Rural Development) and chaired NASULGC's (National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges) International Agriculture Coordinating Committee that advocates for international issues in agriculture. He recently chaired the Globalization Commission for the UCD and is past director and founder of its Sustainable Agriculture Program. He led the effort to establish LTRAS (Long-term Research on Agricultural systems) a 100-year experiment into the functioning of Mediterranean cropping systems. Demment served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia working in the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Department. He has worked for NIH in Cameroon, Kenya and Ethiopia on primate ecology, done consultancies for IFAD and the World Bank on development in West Africa, Central Asia, South East Asia, sub- Saharan Africa and the Middle East. A native of New York, Demment earned his BA from Harvard in Architectural Sciences, his MS and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Zoology. He received an NIH postdoctoral fellowship to study animal nutrition at Cornell before arriving at UC Davis in 1982.
Reed Hertford, EAM Company
Reed Hertford has a B.S. degree in business from the University of California/Berkeley, an M.S. from the same institution in agricultural economics, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. He has devoted over 40 years to international agriculture and rural development as a researcher, teacher, and administrator, living in Latin American for almost 15 years. He was a staffer in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a program officer for a major U.S. foundation (Ford), a professor and director of international agricultural programs in a Land Grant University (Rutgers), the head of the largest U.S. university consortium working overseas in agriculture (SECID), the #2 person in a large multilateral organization (IICA), Board Chair of an international agricultural research center (CIAT), President and Director of my professional association (AIARD), and a consultant for the past dozen years, working chiefly in Latin America and the Caribbean, but also in Africa and Asia.
Most of his professional work has dealt with developing countries and involved the formulation of rural national strategies and investment projects; impact assessments of agricultural research; evaluations of institutions, policies, and national systems of agricultural research; and studies and short courses dealing with the competitiveness of agriculture in developing nations. Recently, with a Colombian colleague, a comprehensive study of rural poverty in Central America was conducted, utilizing all the household surveys available from all sources at two points in time in the 1990s; and a monograph was published with Phil Pardey and Stanley Wood entitled Research Futures which includes an analysis of post-1960 agricultural and related policy developments in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Symantha Holben, World Food Logistics Organization
Symantha A. Holben is the International Programs Manager at the Global Cold Chain Alliance where she provides management and technical support to GCCAs agriculture, cold chain, and association development activities in LAC, Africa and Asia. She has worked in international development for 10 years as a program manager, analyst, grants manager and researcher. Prior to joining the GCCA, Dr. Holben worked on developing and implementing donor funded programs in agriculture, natural resource management, labor policy, democratic governance, alternative development and public health.
Dr. Holben has a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology with a focus on Agriculture and Resource Management from the Catholic University of America. Dr. Holben excels at cross-cultural communications and applying Anthropological approaches to project implementation and day-to-day problem solving in the field.
Cheryl Jackson-Lewis, USAID, Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade Bureau
Cheryl Jackson-Lewis is a Senior Nutrition Policy Advisor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade. Immediately before joining the USAID Staff, Ms. Jackson was a Branch Chief and Supervisory Nutritionist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service. She has worked in both the public and private sectors as a Chief Clinical and Administrative Dietitian.
She has worked extensively on health and nutrition programs in over 15 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Michael L. Jahncke, Virginia Cooperative Extension
Professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology, Virginia Tech, and Director of the Virginia Seafood Agriculture Research and Extension Center, Hampton, VA. Dr. Jahncke joined the Virginia Tech faculty in 1997. Previous to his appointment at Virginia Tech, he held several positions with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), U.S. Department of Commerce (USDOC). Dr. Jahncke is a past member of the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) (2005-2009, 1995-2002). He is a member of the National Seafood HACCP Alliance Steering Committee. He also serves on the executive committee for the Tropical and Subtropical Seafood Science and Technology Society of the Americas. He is a scientific advisor and a member of the Scientific Advisory Council (SAC) for the World Food Logistics Organization (WFLO)/International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses (IARW), and a past member of the United States delegation to the Codex Alimentarius Committee on Food Hygiene.
Recently his research and extension programs have focused on development, implementation and training in Good Aquaculture Practices (GAqPs) to improve food safety and food quality issues associated with imported and domestic aquacultured products.
Michael O'Neill, USDA/National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Mike O'Neill is the National Program Leader for Water Resources with the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Mike has nearly 30 years’ experience working with water issues in the United States and internationally. Dr. O'Neill represents USDA and NIFA on several national task forces related to water resource management. His focus is on agricultural water use and water quality. Recently, he served for two months at the U.S. Embassy in La Paz, Bolivia working with the local government on a water management plan. He also has worked in the Middle East and China on water resource issues. Prior to joining NIFA, Mike was on the faculty of Geography & Earth Resources at Utah State University and the Geography Department at Virginia Tech.
Keith P. West, Jr., Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dr. West is the George G. Graham Professor of Infant and Child Nutrition and directs the Center for Human Nutrition in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has carried out research to prevent undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies in Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Federated States of Micronesia, Malawi and Zambia. In the seventies, he worked as a field nutritionist with Concern in Bangladesh. As a Major in the US Army Medical Specialist Corps, in the Division of Preventive Medicine of the Office of the Surgeon General he developed the Military Recommended Dietary Allowances (MRDAs) that has guided the nutritional content of tri-service menus since the eighties. Currently, Prof West directs the JiVitA Project, a large nutrition intervention research project seeking to improve the survival, health and development of children and mothers in northern rural Bangladesh. He has published over 160 scientific papers and reviews, and has coauthored a book on "Vitamin A Deficiency: Health, Survival and Vision".
He has served on steering committees of the International Vitamin A Consultative Group (IVACG) and the Micronutrient Forum, as nutrition consultant to UN organizations, and is the 2007 recipient of the International Nutrition Award of the American Society of Nutrition.
Laura Birx is a Nutrition Advisor in the Global Health Bureau at USAID/Washington. She is part of the USAID teams working on the Global Hunger and Food Security Initiative, Feed the Future, and the Global Health Initiative. She is the technical advisor for the global Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance Project 2 (FANTA-2), which works to improve nutrition and food security policies, strategies, and programs through technical support to USAID and its partners.
Prior to joining USAID, she worked for a private foundation in the U.S. that focused on health policy and community development in low-income communities, particularly in immigrant and refugee families. She has a BA from Colby College and an MPH from George Washington University.
Susan D. Bradley, USAID, Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance Bureau
Susan Bradley is a Senior Policy Advisor in USAID's Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA) and Deputy to USAID's Global Food Security Coordinator. Ms. Bradley is also a member of USAID and USG inter-agency food security teams currently working to implement a whole-of-government global food security strategy. Before it was institutionalized as one of the Agency's policy coordination committees, Ms. Bradley was co-Chair of the Agency's Global Food Security Task Force. Ms. Bradley has been with USAID since 1998, and prior to her current position she served as a country backstop officer, a Team Leader, and Acting Chief of Emergency Programs for USAID's Office of Food for Peace.
Ms. Bradley managed USAID's food assistance programming in the Horn of Africa through 3 near-famines, and has served on USG Disaster Assistance Response Teams in Kosovo, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Iraq. Before joining USAID Ms. Bradley worked with a number of non-governmental organizations including CARE International and Doctors Without Borders (Belgium), and she began her work in international assistance as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger. She received her Masters of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University, MD, and her undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Davidson College, N.C.
Nancy Cavallaro, USDA/National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Nancy Cavallaro has been a National Program leader at USDA-CSREES/NIFA since January 2001, leading programs in soil science, watershed science, and climate change. Prior to that she worked for 16 years as a professor of soil science at the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, and before that was a "Profesor-Investigador" at the Graduate College of Chapingo, Mexico. She has a doctorate in soil science from Cornell University.
Maria Elisa Christie, Virginia Tech
Dr. Maria Elisa Christie is Program Director for Women in International Development at Virginia Tech. She has over twenty years of experience in international development and environment working with a variety of development, research, and policy NGOs throughout the developing world and with local, state, and federal governments in the US and Mexico. She has played a key role launching new projects that support international collaboration. Currently, Dr. Christie heads global gender research projects in the Integrated Pest Management Collaborative Research Support Program (IPM CRSP), the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management CRSP, and in Peanut CRSP. Dr. Christie's research focuses on gendered spaces and everyday life in nature/society relations, participatory research methodologies, kitchens and gardens, and women's reciprocity networks.
As Program Director for Women in International Development, Dr. Christie's role is to provide leadership within International Programs to ensure that all projects and programs are gender sensitive and will have a positive effect on the most disadvantaged beneficiaries, many of whom are women, and to work with faculty at Virginia Tech in order to increase their capacity to effectively address gender issues in international research and grant proposals.
Gerald F. Combs, Jr., USDA-Agricultural Research Service
Dr. Combs has a wide interest in Agriculture, Nutrition and Health, particularly in improving the linkage of food production and human health and well being. He is internationally recognized as a leader in nutrition, having published widely and conducted research ranging from basic biochemical studies to human metabolic and clinical investigations as well as serving on USDA strategic planning committees for food security research. He has written two leading text/reference books, The Role of Selenium in Nutrition (Academic Press, 1986) and The Vitamins: Fundamental Aspects in Nutrition and Health (Academic Press, 1992; revised editions in 1998, 2007 and 2011). Combs' education includes a Ph.D. in Nutritional Biochemistry from Cornell University and a M.S. in Entomology (minor: Physiology), also from Cornell University.
His International experience includes extensive work in China and Bangladesh; also Costa Rica, Indonesia, Nepal, Taiwan, Australia, Egypt, Russia, Canada and Germany as well as having lectured in 30 countries. Scientific highlights include 1st to demonstrate anti-carcinogenic efficacy of selenium in humans; 1st to describe endemic rickets in Bangladesh; 1st to conduct a comprehensive study of a community food system in a developing country (Bangladesh); 1st studies of genetic determinants of selenium metabolism; 1st to develop rapid means of measuring selenium in small grains to facilitate commodification of high-selenium grains. Currently, Dr. Combs serves as the Center Director of the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center of the USDA-Agricultural Research Service, where he is also actively pursuing research that addresses the proteomics/metabolomics of selenium in humans, including effects of adiposity.
Owen Cylke, World Wildlife Fund
Owen Cylke is director, WWF Macroeconomics Program Office, which is engaged around issues related to development and the environment, more recently climate, development and the environment. He has been engaged over the past twenty years as a senior policy advisor with the Tata Energy Research Institute, National Environmental Policy Institute, Winrock International and WWF. Earlier he served as president of the Association of Big Eight Universities, a consortium of mid-west research universities. Mr. Cylke has also served as a senior officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Over a twenty five year career there, he served as deputy assistant administrator for Food and Voluntary Assistance, director of the U.S. Economic Assistance Mission to India and deputy director in Afghanistan and Egypt.
He retired with the rank of Career Minister. Mr. Cylke is a graduate of Yale University and the Yale Law School. He served in Ethiopia as a Peace Corps Volunteer at the Haile Selassie I University, Faculty of Law.
Montague W. Demment, University of California, Davis
Dr. Montague W. Demment is Director of the Global Livestock Collaborative Research Support Program, a program funded by USAID and the US university community, and professor of ecology in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the University of California, Davis. He has served in this role since June 1994. Demment oversees and directs the GL-CRSP program. The GL-CRSP involves scientists from 12 US universities and 60 foreign institutions that address issues of food security, trade, environment and policy related to the livestock sector in developing countries. As director Demment is responsible for the Management Entity at UC Davis, that has programmatic and fiscal responsibility for this $5M per year program. He also is responsible to USAID to provide direction and advise on issues related to development particularly with regards to livestock. Demment also serves as Associate Vice President for International Development at APLU where he is focused on the role of higher education in development. He has been involved in advocacy for higher education support for Africa and been instrumental in the creation of APLU's Africa U.S. Higher Education Initiative team on which he continues to serve. Demment conducts his own research on nutritional ecology of herbivores. He teaches two courses in nutrition and ecology and one course in agriculture and environment.
NSF, BARD, BSF, and a number of smaller entities have funded his research program. Demment is past president of AIARD (Association for Agriculture and Rural Development) and chaired NASULGC's (National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges) International Agriculture Coordinating Committee that advocates for international issues in agriculture. He recently chaired the Globalization Commission for the UCD and is past director and founder of its Sustainable Agriculture Program. He led the effort to establish LTRAS (Long-term Research on Agricultural systems) a 100-year experiment into the functioning of Mediterranean cropping systems. Demment served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia working in the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Department. He has worked for NIH in Cameroon, Kenya and Ethiopia on primate ecology, done consultancies for IFAD and the World Bank on development in West Africa, Central Asia, South East Asia, sub- Saharan Africa and the Middle East. A native of New York, Demment earned his BA from Harvard in Architectural Sciences, his MS and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Zoology. He received an NIH postdoctoral fellowship to study animal nutrition at Cornell before arriving at UC Davis in 1982.
Reed Hertford, EAM Company
Reed Hertford has a B.S. degree in business from the University of California/Berkeley, an M.S. from the same institution in agricultural economics, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago. He has devoted over 40 years to international agriculture and rural development as a researcher, teacher, and administrator, living in Latin American for almost 15 years. He was a staffer in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a program officer for a major U.S. foundation (Ford), a professor and director of international agricultural programs in a Land Grant University (Rutgers), the head of the largest U.S. university consortium working overseas in agriculture (SECID), the #2 person in a large multilateral organization (IICA), Board Chair of an international agricultural research center (CIAT), President and Director of my professional association (AIARD), and a consultant for the past dozen years, working chiefly in Latin America and the Caribbean, but also in Africa and Asia.
Most of his professional work has dealt with developing countries and involved the formulation of rural national strategies and investment projects; impact assessments of agricultural research; evaluations of institutions, policies, and national systems of agricultural research; and studies and short courses dealing with the competitiveness of agriculture in developing nations. Recently, with a Colombian colleague, a comprehensive study of rural poverty in Central America was conducted, utilizing all the household surveys available from all sources at two points in time in the 1990s; and a monograph was published with Phil Pardey and Stanley Wood entitled Research Futures which includes an analysis of post-1960 agricultural and related policy developments in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Symantha Holben, World Food Logistics Organization
Symantha A. Holben is the International Programs Manager at the Global Cold Chain Alliance where she provides management and technical support to GCCAs agriculture, cold chain, and association development activities in LAC, Africa and Asia. She has worked in international development for 10 years as a program manager, analyst, grants manager and researcher. Prior to joining the GCCA, Dr. Holben worked on developing and implementing donor funded programs in agriculture, natural resource management, labor policy, democratic governance, alternative development and public health.
Dr. Holben has a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology with a focus on Agriculture and Resource Management from the Catholic University of America. Dr. Holben excels at cross-cultural communications and applying Anthropological approaches to project implementation and day-to-day problem solving in the field.
Cheryl Jackson-Lewis, USAID, Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade Bureau
Cheryl Jackson-Lewis is a Senior Nutrition Policy Advisor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade. Immediately before joining the USAID Staff, Ms. Jackson was a Branch Chief and Supervisory Nutritionist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service. She has worked in both the public and private sectors as a Chief Clinical and Administrative Dietitian.
She has worked extensively on health and nutrition programs in over 15 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Michael L. Jahncke, Virginia Cooperative Extension
Professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology, Virginia Tech, and Director of the Virginia Seafood Agriculture Research and Extension Center, Hampton, VA. Dr. Jahncke joined the Virginia Tech faculty in 1997. Previous to his appointment at Virginia Tech, he held several positions with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), U.S. Department of Commerce (USDOC). Dr. Jahncke is a past member of the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) (2005-2009, 1995-2002). He is a member of the National Seafood HACCP Alliance Steering Committee. He also serves on the executive committee for the Tropical and Subtropical Seafood Science and Technology Society of the Americas. He is a scientific advisor and a member of the Scientific Advisory Council (SAC) for the World Food Logistics Organization (WFLO)/International Association of Refrigerated Warehouses (IARW), and a past member of the United States delegation to the Codex Alimentarius Committee on Food Hygiene.
Recently his research and extension programs have focused on development, implementation and training in Good Aquaculture Practices (GAqPs) to improve food safety and food quality issues associated with imported and domestic aquacultured products.
Michael O'Neill, USDA/National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Mike O'Neill is the National Program Leader for Water Resources with the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Mike has nearly 30 years’ experience working with water issues in the United States and internationally. Dr. O'Neill represents USDA and NIFA on several national task forces related to water resource management. His focus is on agricultural water use and water quality. Recently, he served for two months at the U.S. Embassy in La Paz, Bolivia working with the local government on a water management plan. He also has worked in the Middle East and China on water resource issues. Prior to joining NIFA, Mike was on the faculty of Geography & Earth Resources at Utah State University and the Geography Department at Virginia Tech.
Keith P. West, Jr., Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dr. West is the George G. Graham Professor of Infant and Child Nutrition and directs the Center for Human Nutrition in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has carried out research to prevent undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies in Nepal, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Federated States of Micronesia, Malawi and Zambia. In the seventies, he worked as a field nutritionist with Concern in Bangladesh. As a Major in the US Army Medical Specialist Corps, in the Division of Preventive Medicine of the Office of the Surgeon General he developed the Military Recommended Dietary Allowances (MRDAs) that has guided the nutritional content of tri-service menus since the eighties. Currently, Prof West directs the JiVitA Project, a large nutrition intervention research project seeking to improve the survival, health and development of children and mothers in northern rural Bangladesh. He has published over 160 scientific papers and reviews, and has coauthored a book on "Vitamin A Deficiency: Health, Survival and Vision".
He has served on steering committees of the International Vitamin A Consultative Group (IVACG) and the Micronutrient Forum, as nutrition consultant to UN organizations, and is the 2007 recipient of the International Nutrition Award of the American Society of Nutrition.
