Food and Bioterror

David Lineback - director, Joint Institute of Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, University of Maryland
Expertise: lessons of September 11 on food safety and food security; microbiological food safety and food borne disease

Credentials: chairman, 12th World Congress of Food Science and Technology (July, 2003) Organizing Committee; chair, Scientific Council, International Union of Food Science & Technology; past president, Council for Agricultural Science and Technology; former dean, College of Agriculture, University of Idaho
Contact: 301-405-8382 (office); 301- 946-7203 (home); lineback@umd.edu
Website : http://www.jifsan.umd.edu/bio_lineback.htm

Norman Hansen - professor, chemistry and biochemistry, University of Maryland
Expertise: detecting pathogens, protecting food supply from bioterrorism

Credentials: searching for antibiotic alternatives for food supply, specifically, antimicrobial peptides, proteins that kill infectious bacteria, including bacterial spores, such as the anthrax-causing bacillus
Contact: 301-405-1847 (office); jh21@umail.umd.edu
Website : www.chem.umd.edu/faculty/biochem/hansen/hansen.htm

Robert Sprinkle M.D. - associate professor of public policy, University of Maryland School of Public Policy
Expertise: biosabotage of food supply; prospect of the biosabotage of agriculture by individuals, groups, hostile states or unscrupulously competing corporations

Credentials: editor-in-chief, Politics and the Life Sciences
Contact: 301-405-0184 (office); 301-864-2170 (home); sprinkle@umd.edu
Website: http://www.puaf.umd.edu/faculty/people/sprinklem.html ; www.politicsandthelifesciences.org

Toxic Molds
George Bean - professor, cell biology and molecular genetics, University of Maryland
Expertise: toxic fungi; toxic molds; detection and prevention of toxigenic fungi in foods and animal feeds

Credentials: three decades working with toxic fungi that occur in foods and feeds
Contact: gb9@umail.umd.edu ; or Ellen Ternes, 301-405-4627
Website: http://www.life.umd.edu/CBMG/faculty/bean/bean2.html

Economic Impact of Food Attacks
Bruce L. Gardner - professor of agricultural and resource economics and interim dean, College of Agriculture, University of Maryland
Expertise: g lobal and domestic agricultural economics

Credentials: former assistant secretary for economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1989-1992; author, "The Economics of Agricultural Policies"
Contact: 301-405-2072 (office); 301-927-9108 (home); bgardner@arec.umd.edu   
Web site: www.arec.umd.edu/bgardner/

Food Warnings
Linda Aldoory - director, Center for Risk Communication Research; assistant professor of communication, University of Maryland
Expertise: effective public communication of potential health and security risks; how public perceptions vary by race, gender and class; public reactions to terror warnings;

Credentials: recent research projects include a funded study on public perceptions of bioterrorism in news coverage and a grant to study audience reactions to conflicting media information about the safety of eating fish (work in this area won top research paper awards); created Center on Risk Communication Research as a unique vehicle to focus on the communication aspects of risk analysis; editor-elect, Journal of Public Relations Research; publications include "Making Health Communications Meaningful for Women: Factors that Influence Involvement and the Situational Theory of Publics" and a book, "Gender Challenge to Media: Diverse Voices from the Field"
Contacts: 301-405-6528 (office); 301-509-2617 (cell); riskcenter@umd.edu
Web Site: http://www.comm.riskcenter.umd.edu/about%20us.html ; http://www.comm.umd.edu/people/faculty/laldoory.html