IAFP Announces 2017 Travel Award Recipients

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Des Moines, Iowa - The International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) will present Travel Awards to the following individuals at IAFP 2017, July 9–12, in Tampa, Florida. Sponsored by IAFP and the IAFP Foundation, the Travel Award for State or Provincial Health or Agricultural Department Employees and the Travel Award for Food Safety Professionals in a Country with a Developing Economy will provide funding to enable recipients to travel to and participate in IAFP 2017.

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

Ted Gatesy is the Microbiology Section Manager for the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development’s (MDARD) Geagley Laboratory in East Lansing, Michigan. Mr. Gatesy oversees ISO17025 accreditation for the Food Safety Microbiology Laboratory and the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Certified Dairy Laboratory. He serves as a laboratory representative on the MDARD Rapid Response Team and as a laboratory liaison for MDARD’s Emergency Management Team. Mr. Gatesy is also the Principle Investigator for the FDA Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) Cooperative Agreement Program. He works closely with the FDA Genome Trakr program, and with the MDARD regulatory officials, environmental health staff, and epidemiologists on foodborne outbreaks and surveillance sample testing.

Michael Perry is the Supervisor of the Biodefense Laboratory (BDL) at the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) – Wadsworth Center in Albany, where his career began as a Research Scientist. His time is dedicated to public health laboratory service, training, and advancing food testing capabilities. Mr. Perry is the lead scientist on several collaborations with federal agencies, including the CDC, FDA, DHS, and USDA. As lead scientist at Wadsworth Center’s FERN, his efforts are focused on assay development for bacterial and toxin identification in foods where he has submitted several multi-laboratory validations for the detection of biothreat agents. During his tenure with NYSDOH and FERN, Mr. Perry has taught courses focused on foodborne pathogens/toxins, food defense, agroterrorism, spectrometry/emerging technologies, and dissemination.

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

Frederick Adzitey is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Animal Science at the University for Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale, Ghana. His research is focused on isolation, antibiotic resistance, and molecular characterization of foodborne and waterborne pathogens. Dr. Adzitey is also an advocate of using local plant resources to control these pathogens and to develop healthy and safe meat products. Throughout his academic career, he has taught food safety and related courses to more than 500 students; and provided consulting services to 40 farmers, four abattoir operators, and three food processors on safe and hygienic methods of producing animals and food. For his various achievements, Dr. Adzitey has received numerous awards, grants, and fellowships to attend various conferences and workshops.

Alonzo Gabriel is a Professor of Food Science and Technology and the Principal Investigator of the Laboratory of Food Microbiology and Hygiene in the Department of Food Science and Nutrition, College of Home Economics, at the University of the Philippines Diliman Campus in Quezon City. Dr. Gabriel teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in General and Food Microbiology, Sterilization Processes, and Fruits and Vegetable Processing. His research interests include Hurdle Food Technology, microbial stress exposures and stress adaptation to food and processing environments, and traditional and emerging food processing technologies. Dr. Gabriel also works with local and national government offices in the Philippines, non-government organizations, consumer groups, and food industry stakeholders for Food Security and Protection information dissemination. 

Patrick Njage is a lecturer at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, and is currently on research stay at the Technical University of Denmark. Dr. Njage’s research interests include quantitative microbial risk analysis, molecular epidemiology of foodborne pathogens focusing on pathogenicity, antimicrobial resistance genetic elements and antimicrobial resistance gene flow in foods, and his current focus of next generation sequencing data for microbial risk assessment. He taught and developed courses for 14 years related to food microbiology, food safety, biometry, quality management and risk analysis at both the University of Pretoria and the University of Nairobi. During this time, he also supervised 12 completed Master of Science students and three ongoing Ph.D. students. Dr. Njage has extensive experience working as a Chief Agricultural Officer for the Ministry of Agriculture in Kenya and as advisor to the Kenya Bureau of Standards and East African Standard committees on microbiological criteria for foods.