Committee Member Biographical Sketches
Malden C. Nesheim, Ph.D. (Chair) is provost emeritus and professor of nutrition emeritus at Cornell University. His previous positions have included director of the Division of Nutritional Sciences and vice president for planning and budgeting at Cornell University. He has also served as chair of the Board of Trustees of the Pan American Health and Education Foundation, President of the American Institute of Nutrition, chair of the National Institutes of Health Nutrition Study Section, and chair of the National Nutrition Consortium. He also chaired the 1990 U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)/Department of Health and Human Services Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and has been on the USDA Board of Scientific Counselors. Dr. Nesheim has served as an advisor to the Office of Science and Technology Policy and chaired the Presidential Commission on Dietary Supplement Labels, appointed in 1996-98 to consider regulatory matters relative to marketing dietary supplements. He is a Fellow of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Nesheim is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Conrad A. Elvejhem Award for Distinguished Service to the Public Through the Science of Nutrition. His research interests are in human and animal nutrition, and nutritional assessment and nutrition policy. He has written extensively on animal and human nutrition and agriculture production. His research has focused on both domestic and international matters. He has contributed to many National Academy of Sciences (NAS) activities. Dr. Nesheim is a past member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Food and Nutrition Board. He previously served as chair of the IOM Committee on Nutrient Relationships in Seafood: Selections to Balance Benefits and Risks,
and served as the vice chair and chair of the IOM Committee on International Nutrition Programs. He was also a member of the Subcommittee on the 10th Edition of the Recommended Dietary Allowances and an ex officio member of the U.S. National Committee of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences. Dr. Nesheim was elected a National Associate of the NAS in 2008. He received a Ph.D. in nutrition from Cornell University as well as an M.S. in animal nutrition and a B.S. in agricultural science.
Katherine (Kate) Clancy, Ph.D., is currently a food systems consultant, visiting scholar at the Center for a Livable Future Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, adjunct professor at Tufts University, and Senior Fellow in the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture, University of Minnesota (she resides in University Park, Maryland). She has held faculty positions at Cornell University and Syracuse University, the Federal Trade Commission, and nonprofits such as the Wallace Center for Agricultural and Environmental Policy, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy. She has served on numerous boards (Society for Nutrition Education, Bread for the World, Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture, Consortium for Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education, Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, and the Agriculture Food and Human Values Society, among others). Her current interests are the research and policy facets of Agriculture of the Middle, the development of regional food systems, food supply chain analyses, the connections between community food security and regional food security, and the research needed to advance sustainable agriculture and food systems policy. Dr. Clancy is a member of the IOM Planning Committee on Sustainable Diets: Food and Healthy People and a Healthy Planet: A Workshop. She received her Ph.D. in nutrition sciences from the University of California (UC), Berkeley.
James K. Hammitt, Ph.D., is professor of economics and decision sciences and director of the Center for Risk Analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health. His research and teaching concern the development of decision analysis, benefit–cost analysis, and other quantitative methods and their application to health and environmental policy. Dr. Hammitt is particularly interested in comprehensive evaluation of risk control measures (including ancillary benefits and countervailing risks) and alternative methods for measuring the value of reducing health risks, including monetary and health-adjusted life-year metrics. He served as a member of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science Advisory Board and its Environmental Economics Advisory Committee and chaired the EPA Advisory Council on Clear Air Compliance Analysis. He also served as a member of the American Statistical Association Committee on Energy Statistics
(Advisory Committee to the U.S. Energy Information Administration) and on the National Research Council (NRC) and the IOM panels on dioxin in the food supply, external costs and benefits of energy production and consumption, and measures of health benefits for environmental, health, and safety regulation. He held the Pierre-de-Fermat Chaire d’Éxcellence at the Toulouse School of Economics and served as senior mathematician at the RAND Corporation. Dr. Hammitt received his Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University.
Ross A. Hammond, Ph.D., is senior fellow in economic studies at The Brookings Institution, where he is also director of the Center on Social Dynamics and Policy. His primary area of expertise is modeling complex social dynamics in economic, political, and public health systems. Dr. Hammond has more than 15 years of experience with mathematical and computational modeling techniques from complex systems science. His current research topics include obesity, behavioral epidemiology, food systems, tobacco control, corruption, segregation, trust, and decision making. He has authored numerous scientific articles, and his work has been featured in New Scientist, Salon, The Atlantic Monthly, Scientific American, and major news media. Dr. Hammond currently serves on the editorial board of the journal Childhood Obesity; on the steering committee for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Comparative Modeling Network of the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research; and as a member of the NIH MIDAS (Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study) and NICH (Network on Inequality, Complexity, and Health) networks. Dr. Hammond has been a consultant to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the IOM, and NIH. He has taught computational modeling at Harvard School of Public Health, the University of Michigan, Washington University, and the NIH/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Institute on Systems Science and Health. He has previously held positions as the Okun-Model Fellow in Economics, a National Science Foundation Fellow in the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at University of Michigan, a visiting scholar at The Santa Fe Institute, and a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP. Dr. Hammond received his B.A. from Williams College and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
Darren L. Haver, Ph.D., is the water resources/water quality advisor and county director for the UC Cooperative Extension in Orange County and center director of the South Coast Research and Extension Center in Orange County. His research and extension efforts focus on protecting local water resources and water quality through pollutant source identification and transport; identification and implementation of pollutant mitigation management methods and practices; and reduced water consumption in
agricultural, urban, and natural environments. He earned his Ph.D. in botany and plant physiology from UC Irvine.
Douglas Jackson-Smith, Ph.D., is professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology at Utah State University (USU). His principal teaching and research interests include the sociology of agriculture, natural resources and the environment, rural community studies, human dimensions of water systems, and applied research methods. Dr. Jackson-Smith is also interested in international development, social studies of science and technology, and political and economic sociology. Currently, he is engaged in research focusing on the social, cultural, and institutional drivers of environmental behaviors; interdisciplinary studies of coupled human–natural systems; and dynamics of economic and technological change in agriculture and their effects on farm families, rural communities, and the environment. He is also developing methods to track the spatial patterns of rural and agricultural land-use changes to evaluate the effectiveness and impacts of exurban land-use planning in the Intermountain West. Dr. Jackson-Smith recently served on the NRC Committee to Study 21st Century Agricultural Systems. Before coming to USU, he served as assistant professor of rural sociology and urban and regional planning at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He previously served as codirector of the Program on Agricultural Technology Studies (a research and extension unit of the College of Agriculture), which examined the impacts of technological change and public policies on farm families in Wisconsin. Dr. Jackson-Smith received his M.A. in agricultural economics and his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Robbin S. Johnson, B.S., is senior policy advisor for global policy studies at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs of the University of Minnesota. He previously served as president of the Cargill Foundation until he retired in 2007. He was elected senior vice president of corporate affairs, working with Cargill’s senior leadership team on public policy and communications strategies. Mr. Johnson currently teaches a course at the Humphrey School on “The Role of Food in the World Economy,” which covers the entire food supply chain from production agriculture to farm, trade, nutrition, climate change, and biotechnology issues. He is a current member of the NRC Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources. He also serves on the boards of Parent Aware for School Readiness and Second Harvest Heartland, and he is a member of the International Policy Council on Food, Agriculture and Trade and the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Johnson writes on topics of food security, food trade, sustainability, and the global food system. He is a past chair of the U.S. Feed Grains Council and the
Canada-Minnesota Business Council. Mr. Johnson received his B.S. from Yale University and he completed graduate study as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in England.
Jean D. Kinsey, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of applied economics in the Department of Applied Economics in the College of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Kinsey is also the director emeritus of The Food Industry Center, which focuses on how various retailers in the food industry serve consumers and how retailers and suppliers interact in food distribution channels. The Food Industry Center at the University of Minnesota is 1 of 13 industry study centers funded by the nonprofit Sloan Foundation. Dr. Kinsey’s research interests include food consumption trends, consumer buying behavior, food safety and consumer confidence, demographic changes in households, food industry structure, trends in food distribution and retail sales, effects of electronic technology on efficiency in retail outlets, economic effects of health and safety regulations, and regulation in the food industry. Dr. Kinsey was appointed as a Resident Fellow at the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy, Resources for the Future, a Distinguished Fellow of the American Council on Consumer Interests, and a Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association. She previously served as a member of the IOM Committee to Review the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children Food Packages. Dr. Kinsey received her Ph.D. in agricultural economics from UC Davis.
Susan M. Krebs-Smith, M.P.H., Ph.D., is chief of the Risk Factor Monitoring and Methods Branch, in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute. She oversees a program of research on the surveillance of risk factors related to cancer, including diet, physical activity, weight status, tobacco use, and sun exposure; methodological issues to improve the assessment of those factors; and issues related to guidance and food policy. Her own surveillance research has emphasized trends in intake of foods and nutrients, especially fruits and vegetables; food sources of nutrients; and factors associated with the intake of foods and/or nutrients, using data from the National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Program. Her contributions in the area of dietary assessment methodology have focused on developing methods to assess dietary patterns, the usual intake of foods, overall diet quality, and conformance to dietary guidelines. Her efforts in dietary guidance and food policy include evaluation of the U.S. food supply and estimating future demand for food commodities, based on population-wide adoption of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and Census projections. Dr. Krebs-Smith is a member of the Advisory Committee for the International Conference on Dietary Assess-
ment Methods, and she has served on the editorial boards for the Journal of the American Dietetic Association and the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, and on the Governing Council of the American Public Health Association. She previously served as a member of the IOM Committee on Nutrient Relationships in Seafood: Selections to Balance Benefits and Risks. Dr. Krebs-Smith received a B.S. in home economics from Bradley University, an M.P.H. from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. in nutrition from Pennsylvania State University.
Matthew (Matt) Liebman, Ph.D., is a professor of agronomy, the Henry A. Wallace Chair for Sustainable Agriculture, and a member of the graduate faculties in Sustainable Agriculture, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Bio-renewable Resources and Technology, and Crop Production and Physiology at Iowa State University. In 2009, he was selected as a Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy. He was awarded the Sustainable Agriculture Achievement Award from Practical Farmers of Iowa in 2013. His scientific research focuses on cropping system diversification, conservation systems, and weed ecology and management. Dr. Liebman is a graduate of Harvard University and obtained his Ph.D. in botany from UC Berkeley.
Frank Mitloehner, Ph.D., is professor and air quality specialist in cooperative extension at UC Davis. He is an expert in agricultural air quality, animal-environmental interactions, and agricultural engineering. Dr. Mitloehner is principal investigator of a broad range of studies, and since appointed to the UC faculty in 2002, he has authored 70 publications in refereed journals and obtained approximately $12 million in extramural grants. Dr. Mitloehner has recently been elected chair of a global United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization project to benchmark the environmental footprint of livestock production. In 2007, he served as the livestock production specialist on a national panel appointed by the White House Office of the Chief Economist to review the USDA Report titled The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity. He serves as work group member on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and is the director of the UC Davis Agricultural Air Quality Center. Dr. Mitloehner was the 2006 recipient of the UC Davis Academic Federation Excellence in Research Award, the 2009 UC Distinguished Service Award for Outstanding Research, and the 2010 EPA Region IX Environmental Award. Dr. Mitloehner received his Ph.D. in animal science from Texas Technical University.
Keshia M. Pollack, M.P.H., Ph.D., is associate professor and director of the Occupational Injury Epidemiology and Prevention Training Program at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Pollack
uses injury epidemiology, translational research, and health impact assessment to advance policies that create safe and healthy environments where people—particularly the most vulnerable—live, work, play, and travel. Her research focuses on identifying risk factors for, and strategies to prevent, injuries related to occupation, obesity, sports and recreation, physical activity, and the built environment. She is also engaged in research that seeks to strengthen food policy councils and promote safe opportunities for play and physical activity to prevent childhood obesity. Dr. Pollack received the 2012 American Public Health Association Injury Control and Emergency Health Services Mid-Career Outstanding Service Award, and she is the 2011 recipient of The Daily Record’s Very Important Professionals Successful by 40. Dr. Pollack received her M.P.H. from Yale University School of Public Health and her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.
Patrick J. Stover, Ph.D., is professor and director of the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. He is also director of the United Nations Food and Nutrition Program for Human and Social Development at Cornell University and vice president elect of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences. Dr. Stover’s research interests focus on the biochemical, genetic, and epigenetic mechanisms that underlie the relationships between folic acid and human pathologies, including neural tube defects and other developmental anomalies, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Specific interests include the regulation of folate-mediated one-carbon metabolism and cellular methylation reactions, molecular basis of the fetal origins hypothesis, development of mouse models to elucidate mechanisms of folate-related pathologies, and translational control of gene expression by ferritin. In 1976, he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers. He received the ERL Stokstad Award in Nutritional Biochemistry from the American Society for Nutritional Sciences and has been selected as an Outstanding Educator four times by Cornell Merrill Presidential Scholars. Dr. Stover is a member of the IOM Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) and he served on the FNB Nutrigenomics Workshop Planning Group. Dr. Stover received his Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biophysics from the Medical College of Virginia.
Katherine M. J. Swanson, Ph.D., is president of KMJ Swanson Food Safety, Inc., a consulting firm based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Previously, Dr. Swanson served as vice president of food safety at Ecolab, Inc., in St. Paul. She has 30 years of food safety management and quality experience, including a focus on preventive microbiological and allergen controls. Currently, she is executive editor for the Food Safety Preventive Controls Alliance Curriculum,
and she is working with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), industry, academics, and state and local regulators on developing the training curriculum that will be recognized by FDA for compliance with the Food Safety Preventive Controls regulation requirements. Previously, as director of microbiology and food safety for the Pillsbury Company, Dr. Swanson developed and implemented Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points and food allergen training and programs for research and development and operations; managed development of electronic specification systems; oversaw food quality system audits; and developed corporate product quality management systems. Dr. Swanson served on two NRC and IOM committees, including the Committee for the Review of Food Safety and Defense Risk Assessments, Analyses, and Data. In 2009, she was elected to the International Association for Food Protection Executive Board. Dr. Swanson is a member of the International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods and chaired the editorial committee for Microorganisms in Food 8—Use of Data for Assessing Process Control and Product Acceptance. She served on the Journal of Food Protection editorial board from 1988 to 1999 and the Food Protection Trends editorial board from 2005 to 2007. Dr. Swanson has received numerous awards, including the 2003 National Food Processors Association Food Safety Award and the 2008 National Center for Food Safety and Technology Food Safety Award. Dr. Swanson received a Ph.D. in food science from the University of Minnesota.
Scott M. Swinton, Ph.D., is professor and associate chairperson of the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University in East Lansing. Dr. Swinton directs the department’s graduate program and teaches applied microeconomics at the graduate level. His economic research explores how people manage agricultural ecosystems, and how changes in policy and technology can encourage better environmental stewardship while sustaining farm livelihoods. He collaborates closely with biologists, engineers, and other social scientists in analyzing food and energy biomass production systems, particularly in the Americas and in Africa. Dr. Swinton has published more than 70 journal articles and edited 3 books. He is currently a director of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association as well as an Aldo Leopold Fellow and past associate editor of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Frontiers in Ecology and Environment, the Review of Agricultural Economics, and the Journal of Production Agriculture. Dr. Swinton served on the NRC’s Committee on Status of Pollinators: Monitoring and Prevention of their Decline in North America. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
