Lecturers

Gerald G Moy served as the GEMS/ Food Manager in the ‘Department of Food Safety and Zoonoses’ at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva for more than 20 years. GEMS/ Food, a joint WHO/ UNEP programme to monitor levels and trends of contaminants in the food supply and the diet, was instrumental in promoting total diet studies as well as the five international and several regional workshops and training courses beginning in 1999. Gerald is the co-editor of two recently published books, ‘Total Diet Studies (Springer, New York, November 2013) and Encyclopaedia of Food Safety (Elsevier, London, January 2014). Amongst other consulting work, he has peer-reviewed reports from several total diet studies, including Australia and Papua New Guinea. He is also a member of the International Advisory Committee of the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment, the Technical Advisory Group of World Food Program and the WHO International Virtual Advisory Group on Mass Gatherings and the Committee on Food Safety of the International Union of Food Science and Technology.

Véronique Sirot (ANSES) is a doctor of epidemiology and public health, and has been a scientific coordinator in the Risk Assessment Department of the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (ANSES) since 2005. She works in the field of risk assessment providing input into the scientific committees of ANSES, particularly in the areas of seafood, as well as participating actively in several research projects. In charge of studies on exposure to food chemicals, Véronique was in the coordination team for the second French TDS (2005-2011), and is now involved in the on-going infant French TDS (2010-2014). She also participated in the EFSA working group on Total Diet Studies (2010-2011) and is author or co-author of about 40 articles on dietary exposure and risk/benefit assessment.

Siân Astley (EuroFIR AISBL) has worked extensively with individuals and organisations throughout Europe from a variety of disciplines including research, food and biotech industries and the media. She is author of more than 300 popular science articles for magazines and trade publications as well as 25 peer-reviewed papers, and she was awarded her Diploma in Science Communication in 2009 (Birkbeck University of London). After 14 years as a bench-scientist, Siân became Communications Manager for NuGO, one of the first FP6 Networks of Excellence, and was the European Communications Manager for the Institute of Food Research in Norwich (UK) until April 2012. Currently, she is the Training and Communication Manager for EuroFIR AISBL supporting training within EU-funded research projects and networks and communication of research activities.

Davide Arcella (EFSA), Officer in the Risk Assessment and Scientific Assistance Directorate, Evidence Management Unit at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and head of the Exposure Team, is responsible for the collection and analysis of food consumption data, and for the development and application of new methodologies for dietary exposure assessment. In this context, he carries out or supervises the assessment of exposure to different types of chemicals in food and animal feed (e.g. contaminants, flavourings, food additives, packaging residues, nutrients, and pesticides) for stand-alone reports or in support of EFSA panels or units. Davide holds a Masters in statistical and demographic sciences from “La Sapienza” University (Rome, Italy). He has worked in the area of food safety since 1998, having started his career at the Italian National Research Institute for Food and Nutrition (INRAN), where he worked for almost 10 years. He joined EFSA in 2007 and is a member of the FAO/WHO roster of JECFA experts for exposure assessment of chemicals in food.

Aida Turrini (CRA-NUT) has a background in statistics. She has worked at the Italian National Statistics Bureau developing software (1979-1986) but has focused on nutrition since 1986 when she became researcher at National Institute of Nutrition (INRAN). INRAN became part of the Agricultural Research Council (CRA) in 2013. Aida has been involved in three Italian nationwide dietary surveys, and coordinated the most recent one. Director of the INRAN Scientific Program for the “database system: food composition and food consumption data”, Aida has considerable experience leading research teams in national and international projects covering a wide range of research where food consumption and food composition data are required including dietary evaluation and dietary exposure of the population. She has been on several Italian and European Committees as an expert in the food consumption and food information processing. She also teaches statistics and nutritional database management at graduate and post-graduate levels.

Oliver Lindtner (BfR) is head of unit ‘Exposure assessment and standardisation’. He is a mathematician by training, and has worked on modelling for dietary and chemical exposure assessment, data sources for exposure assessment, probabilistic methods and uncertainties in exposure. Oliver is also an expert in total diet studies and served on the EFSA/ FAO/ WHO working group on TDS as well as being a work package leader for TDS-Exposure and responsible for the German pilot study within TDS-Exposure. He is head of an on-going food survey amongst German children aged between 6 months and 5 years (KiESEL-Survey) and the First German TDS, which started in 2015. Besides the TDS-working group, Oliver has been/ is a member of several other EFSA working groups, mainly CONTAM and the ANS-Panel, since 2014.

Marcela Dofkova (SZU) has a background of biology and qualified as specialist in public health in 2006. Since 1996, Marcela has worked in the Czech National Institute of Public Health (Státní Zdravotní Ústav) analsing data describing food consumption, nutrient intake, and dietary exposure in the Czech Republic. Marcela participated in the planning and realisation of the last national wide dietary survey organized in 2003-04 where consumption data at the individual level were collected. She also has experience in processing of data based on Household Budget Surveys. Marcela is involved in the Czech Total Diet Study, a long-term programme performed since 1994, which focuses on estimating dietary exposure/ intake of about 70 contaminants and nutrients. Results produced in national TDS serve as basis for health risk assessment associated with usual dietary habits of the Czech population, and make possible observations of trends over time. Marcela has been involved in many international research projects including TDS-Exposure and, currently, she is a member of the EFSA Network on Food Consumption Data.

Martin Rose (FERA) studied chemistry at the University of East Anglia and is an analytical chemist. He has worked on chemical aspects of food safety and quality for many years and he published extensively. Work since 1999 has included research into dioxins and other emerging food contaminants with the aim of developing work in the wider environment, food and health arena. He specialises in the application of analytical chemistry to multi-disciplinary research projects looking at aspects such as environmental pathways, remediation, risk assessment methodologies, emergency response, bioanalytical methods, ecotoxicology, reproductive toxicology and identification and prioritisation schemes for emerging contaminants. Martin was a member of the EFSA Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain (CONTAM) (2010- 2012) and a member of the EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources Added to Food (ANS) (2012- 2014).

Stefan Voorspoels (VITO) is a pharmacist who specialises in analytical toxicology. He has expertise in a wide variety of organic and inorganic analytical techniques and food matrices. He has worked as a scientific officer at the European Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM) where he was responsible for the certification of reference materials for food and environment. There, he developed a profound interest, knowledge and expertise in measurement quality and uncertainty. Currently, Stefan is scientific team leader of the analytical research team at the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO). VITO is a contract research organization that develops, validates and applies analytical methodologies for amongst other things food analysis. The activities of VITO are ISO17025 accredited. Among his current research interests are new and emerging pollutants that have only recently entered our food chain and environment.

Jayne Ireland (DFI) is a senior research scientist with 30 years of experience in the field of food composition data. She was a founding member of the French food composition data bank and was its director from 1992 until she retired at the end of 2008. At that time she was awarded the French medal of Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. She participated in several European projects (FLAIR Eurofoods-Enfant, COST Action 99 – Eurofoods, Balaton, EFCOSUM, EuroFIR NoE and NEXUS) and food composition courses, where she promoted harmonisation of food composition databases. She now works part-time at Danish Food Informatics (DFI) on data documentation and food description, and is Secretary of the European technical committee of the LanguaL thesaurus for food description.

David Weber (ETHZ) is a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science of ETH Zurich in the Global Information Systems Group, led by Prof. M. Norrie. David studied computer science with a focus on information systems and business informatics at the University of Zurich, obtaining an MSc in 2006. For four years, he worked as a software engineer for SIX Card solutions AG before joining the GlobIS Group as a research assistant in 2011. Since 2012, David has been working to extend FoodCASE for managing total diet study data and integrating this application with the existing food composition functionality. His research concerns constraints and data quality. As well as extending and generalising constraint models to cater for different types of data quality, David is exploring how constraints can be defined and managed in single place whilst being executed by different components to optimize data quality controls. The advanced data quality framework, developed for FoodCASE, is one of his main research topics.

Isabel Castanheira (INSA) is a principal scientist at the Instituto Nacional de Saúde Doutor Ricardo Jorge (INSA), the Portuguese National Health Institute, and chair of TC 23 IMEKO Food and Nutrition Metrology. Her research activities are performed within three interacting themes namely: Bioinorganic Chemistry, Food Safety and Quality, and Metrology of Food and Nutrition. She is interested in analysing and studying the content of classical nutrients and contaminants in food products in terms of the comparability and reliability of the measurement values. Presently, this is undertaken as part of ORQUE SUDOE EU Project and Total Diet Study Exposure as well as other national and inter-continental projects. Her contribution to ORQUE SUDOE is focused on scientific aspects of food analysis originated from backyards of Sado estuary. The work in TDS-Exposure is focused on human exposure to food contaminants including heavy metals. She is appointed responsibility for Task 9.9 – Quality Management Practices, and cooperates scientifically with WP5 – Development and implementation of (a) quality standard framework for TDS Centres in Europe. Both work packages are committed to the development of a dedicated quality system, initially in pilot countries, but to be extended to all participating organizations.

Jacob van Klaveren received his education in Human Nutrition at Wageningen University (NL). He is an advisor for the national government, WHO, EFSA and the European Commission on various food safety issues. Since 2010, he has worked at the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) as senior scientific advisor for model development and integration of models in public health and risk assessment issues. Jacob has been involved in many European projects regarding integrated risk assessment and model development, and he coordinates ACROPOLIS, a project aiming to improve cumulative and aggregated exposure in Europe.