IAFP Announces 2015 Travel Award Recipients

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Des Moines, Iowa– The International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) will present Travel Awards to the following individuals at IAFP 2015, July 25–28, in Portland, Oregon. Sponsored by IAFP and the IAFP Foundation, the Travel Award for State or Provincial Health or Agricultural Department Employees and the Travel Award for a Food Safety Professional in a Country with a Developing Economy will provide funding to enable recipients to travel to IAFP 2015.

The Travel Award for State or Provincial Health or Agricultural Department Employees will be presented to the following individuals:

Lisa Hainstock works with the Rapid Response Team for the State of Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, located in Lansing. Since joining the department in 2002, she has been the agency’s point person in local, state and national foodborne outbreak investigations, tracebacks and recalls. Ms. Hainstock has been a representative for the Association of Food and Drug Officials on the Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response (CIFOR) team since 2008 and is currently Co-Chair of the CIFOR Industry workgroup.

Teresa Lee is the only Registered Sanitarian for the City of Rosenberg, Texas, where she has worked since 2009. Ms. Lee began her regulatory career with the City of Houston in 1987, training sanitarians and teaching a food safety class in English and Chinese. She received the City Manager’s Excellence Award in 2014.

Laura Matthias works as a Regional Environmental Epidemiologist for the Florida Department of Health’s Food and Waterborne Disease Program in Tallahassee. Ms. Matthias currently assists 18 counties with foodborne and waterborne disease investigations and serves as the lead case reviewer for all reported cases of vibriosis and ciguatera poisonings in Florida. She was an awards finalist for her presentation in Environmental Health at the 2013 Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists’ Annual Conference.

Caitlin McDonnell is a Microbiologist for the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA), Consumer Protection Lab in Reynoldsburg. Ms. McDonnell is a key player in Ohio’s FDA FERN projects, as well as USDA FSIS testing, and is a fully accredited Dairy Analyst. She was instrumental in helping establish the FDA ISO CAP mentoring program within her agency, with Ohio now leading the country in successful mentorships. She is a lead member on her Quality Assurance team and helped coordinate the Quality System at ODA for two years.

Alida Sorenson is the Recall Coordinator and Rapid Response Team (RRT) Investigator for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture in St. Paul. Ms. Sorenson has a strong background in epidemiology and has led a variety of investigations since joining the department in 2012. During the past year, she has assumed the coordination of the department’s Surveillance Sampling Program and leadership of the RRT Best Practices Manual Traceback Chapter revision workgroup.

Johanna Vostok is an Epidemiologist with the Bureau of Infectious Disease at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) in Boston. Ms. Vostok is a member of the Bureau’s foodborne illness team, where she investigates outbreaks of foodborne illness, analyzes surveillance data, brainstorms methods to improve case investigation and cluster detection, and collaborates with colleagues in the MDPH Bureau of Environmental Health Food Protection and Bureau of Laboratory Sciences. She received a Citation for Outstanding Performance from the MDPH Commissioner and State Governor in 2014.

The Travel Award for a Food Safety Professional in a Country with a Developing Economy will be presented to the following individual: 

Charles Muyanja is a professor in the Department of Food Technology and Nutrition at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, where he has worked since 1992. Dr. Muyanja has made great contributions to teaching both undergraduate and postgraduate students in Food Microbiology, Environmental Microbiology, Hygiene, Food Packaging and Sanitation, and Food Quality Assurance. Dr. Muyanja is the current President of the IAFP Affiliate, Africa Association for Food Protection, which he helped develop in 2013. He has been recognized by the Ministry of Trade Industry and Cooperatives and the Government of Uganda for outstanding contributions to the development of the Uganda National Standards and Quality Policy.