Nutrition and Health: Food Safety

Ivonne M.C.M. Rietjens

Full Professor in Toxicology

Wageningen University & Research

Professor Ivonne M.C.M. Rietjens is full professor in Toxicology and head of the division of Toxicology at Wageningen University (WU), The Netherlands. She is a member of many national and international advisory committees for risk assessment of chemicals. She is an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and has been chairman of the Dutch Society for Toxicology (NVT).

From 2003 till 2014 she has been member and chairman of various Panels and working groups of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and member of the Senate Commission on Food Safety from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)(Germany).

At present she is member of Dutch Health Council, the Dutch Expert Committee on Occupational Standards (DECOS) and the FEMA Expert Panel (USA). She is member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Institute of Public Health & Hygiene (RIVM), member of the Board of trustees of the ILSI (International Life Sciences Institute) Research Foundation, member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of ILSI Europe and member of the EU Scientific Committee on Occupational Exposure Limits for Chemical Agents (SCOEL). She has broad experience in both doctoral and post-doctoral teaching in Food Safety.

Marcel H. Zwietering

Full Professor in Food Microbiology

Wageningen University & Research

After finishing his study in Biotechnology at Wageningen University in 1987 Marcel Zwietering started working in the Food Process Engineering group at the same university. In 1993 he received his Ph.D. (with distinction, <5% of the theses) on a thesis with the title Modeling of the microbial quality of food. He continued in the same group as assistant and later associate professor. His research was focussed mainly at quantitative microbiology and risk assessment. In 1995 he spent a sabbatical half year in the Unilever research lab in Colworth House, UK.

In 1998 he moved to the research lab of Danone, Le Plessis Robinson in France, where he worked until 2002 on quality control of starter cultures, investigation of the symbiosis, metabolic flux analysis, and quantitative risk assessment.

Since January 2003 he is professor in Food Microbiology at Wageningen University. Within this chair research subjects in the domain of food safety management, risk analysis, fermentation, detection and hygiene, eco-physiology and functional genomics are investigated. Education goes from basic food microbiology BSc courses, to MSc courses in Advanced Food Microbiology, Food Fermentation, Advanced Fermentation, Food Safety Risk Assessment and Food Safety Management. The chair is also involved in contributions to courses in risk communication and life sciences for social scientists. Furthermore, there are several PhD courses. There is a distance BSc course given for the NTU University in Singapore and a distance learning international MSc food technology program is running. Additionally, together with the Toxicology section a Food Safety MOOC has been developed that has received a large international audience.

He has published 211 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and has a h-factor of 46 (Scopus September 2020).

Marcel is editor of the International Journal of Food Microbiology and member of the editorial board of the Journal of Food Protection.

He is co-chair of the ILSI-Europe Microbiological Food Safety task force, and member of the strategic advisory committee of the Food Safety Authority of the Netherlands.

He is regularly invited for international expert consultations for the FAO/WHO (JEMRA, Joint FAO/WHO Expert Meetings on Microbiological Risk Assessment) European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and Codex working groups.

In 2006 he was appointed in the Dutch Health Council. In 2005 he was elected as member of the International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods (ICMSF) and was elected chair in 2020.

At IAFP2019 he was awarded the Elmer Marth Educator Award and the International Leadership Award.

He currently supervises 8 PhD students and has supervised 33 PhD students obtaining their degree. He has been examiner of 33 PhD students at Wageningen University and 25 external PhD students (of which 21 outside the Netherlands). Since 2018 he is member of the Academic Board of Wageningen University.

Martine Reij

Assistant Professor in the Laboratory of Food Microbiology

Wageningen University & Research

Martine Reij (1967) graduated from Wageningen University in The Netherlands with an M.Sc. in Food technology (1991) and obtained a PhD in Agricultural Sciences (1997). From 1996 to 1999 she worked as a teacher of biotechnology and process technology in polytechnic education.

Since 1999 she has as been co-worker of the European Chair in Food Safety Microbiology and currently she is associate professor with the Laboratory of Food Microbiology of Wageningen University.

In education Martine focuses on food safety and risk management and she has developed e-learning courses, amongst others, on HACCP, hygienic design, and sampling & monitoring that are used within and outside the university.

Her research interests are the ecology and quantification of microbial pathogens along the food production chain and specifically in dry food production environments.

Jochem Louisse

Assistant Professor in the Division of Toxicology

Wageningen University & Research

Dr. Jochem Louisse is Assistant Professor in the Division of Toxicology at Wageningen UR. He is both a Dutch and European Registered Toxicologist (ERT). He received his MSc in Biology and PhD in Toxicology from Wageningen University in 2007 and 2012, respectively. His research focuses on the development of non-animal test methods to perform toxicity studies. He does so, by developing human cell-based models combined with computer modelling.

Jonathan Nicolas

Postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Toxicology

Wageningen University & Research

Dr. Jonathan Nicolas is Postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Toxicology at Wageningen UR. He received his MSc from the University of Western Brittany (France) and PhD from Wageningen UR in 2011 and 2015, respectively.