Panelists

A.3 – Business cases Panel – Panelists from small companies – Challenges and opportunities for production and distribution of ready-to-eat meals.

Suji Park is an international entrepreneur who built her career around a love for food. Her achievements include:

• Studied at the International Culinary Center (formerly French Culinary Institute of NY).
• In 2005 was the 1st restaurateur to introduce NY Sunday Brunch to Seoul, Korea. Received numerous write-ups in NY Times, Washington Post, and featured on CNN.
• Launched an international restaurant group in both Seoul and Tokyo, as well as a full retail-line of porducts offering cross-cultural cuisine.
• In 2013 launched Suji’s Korean Cuisine, bringing authentic flavors to mainstream Americans.
• Suji’s Korean Cuisine was awarded Top Meal & Sides by Preparedfoods.com.
• Recognized as Nebraska’s Dept. Of Economic Development Diplomat of the Year.
• Plays an integral role as acting board member of UNLs Business College.

Diane Wetherington from iFood Decision Sciences

iFood Decision Sciences, Inc. delivers software solutions to help food companies continuously improve food safety and quality control operations. Their cloud-based products simplify data collection, management and reporting, assuring compliance across a company’s supply chain, and real-time improvement opportunities.” iFood Decision Sciences works extensively in the produce industry, constantly evaluating and refining software to help clients with their ever-evolving data management needs.”

Start-ups

Venture capitalists

B.3 – Institutional case studies Panel – Opportunities and challenges for healthcare, airlines and school systems.

Susan McBride, MS, RD, Harborview/UWMC

Susan McBride has worked in the field of nutrition for the University of Washington for over a decade in both clinical nutrition and foodservice management positions. Through her roles, she works with students and faculty in various capacities. McBride guest lectures to UW nutrition graduate students on topics including nutrition and neurological injuries, nutrition for liver disease and pancreatitis, and applying management theories to the development of programs and services (NUTR 563 & 561). Additionally, she has mentored several students per year since 2006 through full-time rotations in clinical, foodservice and management settings.

Paul Haul, VP of Food Safety and Quality (Flying Foods)

Flying Food Group is one of the largest providers of fresh ready-to-eat meal solutions to the airline industry and to the retail segment. Food Safety and Quality is integral to consumer trust and satisfaction for these products. Responsible for the overall food safety and quality programs for the Flying Food Group enterprise.

Ben Atkinson, MS, RD (Food services director, Auburn School District)

Ben is an experienced health and nutrition professional. He aims to make a positive impact in other people’s lives. Coworkers, employees, supervisors, patients, the public, friends, and family–these are people that he enjoys helping. With experience in many areas, such as public health, clinical nutrition, management, and informatics– he is qualified to make a difference.

D.1 – Regulations Panel – Food safety regulations related to commercial production and delivery of ready-to-eat meals for retails and e-commerce.

Larry Keener – President and CEO – International Product Safety Consultants

Larry is an internationally regarded microbiologist and process authority in the food industry, and frequently works with food companies in this capacity to communicate the processor’s regulatory responsibilities, assess risk and adequacy of controls for entire processing operations from raw materials receipt to finished product storage and distribution, and provide advice and direction with regard to regulatory impact and food safety risk that changes in operations might cause. As such, his areas of expertise range from applied food microbiology and sanitation methods, the development and application of thermal and non-thermal processing and preservation technologies, including high-pressure processing, microwave and pulsed electric field, high-powered ultrasound and design and implementation of food safety management and control systems and strategies.

Kenny Lum – VP Food Safety and Quality Assurance – Trident Seafoods

Kenny started his seafood career in 1982 for Sea-Alaska Products and Trident Seafoods Corporation. Spent next 27 years as Department head, Director, Vice President, and then President of the National Food Processors Association (NFPA) Center for Northwest Seafood, which later became the Seafood Products Association (SPA). During his time with NFPA and SPA, he served as an internationally recognized process and food safety authority. In his role as President was responsible for administration and oversight of SPA staff and services, which included laboratory, process authority, technical and regulatory consultation. After 27 years, returned to Trident Seafoods Corporation as Vice President of Quality Assurance, overseeing the food safety and quality assurance programs.

Claudia Coles – President of the Seafood Products Association

Claudia Coles is President of the Seafood Products Association (SPA) located in Seattle, Washington. SPA provides regulatory and scientific technical assistance to the Seafood and Food Processing Industry. Claudia retired from the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) after 35 years of public service in 2018. During her time at WSDA Claudia served as the Policy & External Affairs Advisor for the Food Safety and Consumer Services Division. She was the Administrator of the Office of Compliance and Outreach and Food Safety Program Manager. Claudia was a Food Microbiologist with the WSDA Laboratory prior to leaving to be a field inspector. Claudia was responsible for bringing several FDA cooperative agreement projects to WSDA such as the Produce Safety Cooperative Agreement, the Rapid Response Team Cooperative Agreement, the Manufactured Foods Regulatory Program Cooperative Agreement, Recall Coordinator Cooperative Agreement as well as a variety of USDA grant projects.

Claudia is a member of several National Food Safety Committees such as the Association of Food and Drug Officials where she was the 2012-2013 President, the Food Safety Preventive Control Alliance (FSPCA) where she is part of the Trainer of Trainer Workgroup and the Seafood HACCP Alliance (SHA) Executive Board. As a State Regulator she participated on the Partnership for Food Protection (PFP) Governance Council, the National Conference of Interstate Milk Shippers and held a variety of board positions on Regional and National Food Safety Associations. Claudia is also a Past President of Western Association of Food and Drug Officials (WAFDO) the National Association of Dairy Regulatory Officials (NADRO) and the Puget Sound Institute of Food Technologists (PSIFT). Claudia received five awards from the Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration for her consistent leadership in food safety, Seafood HACCP, Botulism Recall Team, Interstate Milk Shippers Conference committees such as Dairy HACCP and the International Certification Pilot Program, training teams, and promoting state and federal partnerships.

Subba Rao Gurram – VP of Process Authority Services – Seafood Products Association

As a technical trade organization, the Seafood Products Association currently serves members in the areas of regulatory compliance, and conformance with customer requirements related to food safety, quality, and legality. SPA is an internationally recognized thermal processing authority. While SPA continues to administer the Salmon Control Plan, services have grown to accommodate member needs in the areas of; sensory analysis, food safety (including HACCP), quality, defense, audit assitance, processing and educational programs.

John Mwangi – Founder and Principal at Mwangi and Associates

John Mwangi is senior food safety scientist with extensive international experience in food safety, quality management and regulatory compliance. Dr. Mwangi is the founder and principal at Mwangi and Associates, a food safety consulting company based in Seattle, WA. Dr. Mwangi has most recently worked for Starbucks in the areas of Food Safety, Quality and Regulatory affairs management. He has also held similar position with both Nestle and The Coca-Cola Company. John is a graduate of Cornell University with a PhD in Food science research having studied aseptic processing of particulate-bearing foods.

E.3 – Packaging Panel – Challenges and suitability related to packaging of ready-to-eat meals.

Tom Yang – US Army Natick Soldier Center

Tom’s research strengths include: Advanced thermal HTST sterilization, novel dehydration technology, ultra-high pressure food pasteurization and sterilization, extrusion, food/protein texturization, rheology and ultrastructure, water in foods and intermediate moisture foods, novel food and beverage packaging, and value‑added agricultural, animal and sea‑food product development. He has planned, proposed, and obtained outside funding work, as a team leader and project officer, on new food preservation and stabilization technologies.

He is a Senior Food Technologist with the U.S. Army Natick Labs, from 1993 to the present. He received a BS in Biology from Fu-Jen University, Taipei, Taiwan, a MS in Food Science from Mississippi State University and a PhD in Food Science & Technology, from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

Gene Medlock – Kuraray

Gene has nearly 25 years of experience in the plastics industry in various manufacturing, development, technical service and commercial roles. During his career, Gene has been granted patents in the areas of novel EVOH barrier polymers and polymer applications. Gene recently transitioned from a technical to a commercial role at Kuraray America, Inc., where he now serves as the Senior Sales Manager for EVAL Business Unit

Kevin Laux – Kuraray

Kevin has worked at Kuraray for the past 4 years at the Research and Technical Center in Pasadena, TX. His primary responsibility is technical Service and product development for EVAL and Plantic products. Plantic in particular has presented many interesting opportunities around sustainable packaging. Kevin holds a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois as well as M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University. As a Doctoral Student Kevin worked as a Research Assistant at the Polymer Technology Center and his research focus was in polymer science. Kevin is a native of Chicago, IL but has happily lived in sunny Texas for the past 15 years.

Mike Dolgovskij – Kuraray

Michail “Mike” Dolgovskij was originally introduced to the field of plastics through summer internships at Bayer in New Martinsville, WV and Pittsburg, PA while attending West Virginia University. Following his graduation with a BS in Chemical Engineering in 2001, Mike studied under Professor Chris Macosko at the University of Minnesota. His studies focused on stress-based methods to disperse nanoclays in polymer matrices, and using polymer melt rheology to assess the level of dispersion of nanoclays into the polymers. Following his PhD thesis defense in early 2007, Mike worked for Dow Chemical in Freeport, TX in their Core R&D group, supporting development of new polyethylene technologies, assisting application development for their thermoplastic polyurethanes (now Lubrizol), and becoming the local subject matter expect for scratch and mar behavior of polymer materials for building and automotive applications. Since 2010, Mike has been with Kuraray America technical service and development engineer, where he works directly with customers and end-users to use ethylene vinyl-alcohol copolymer (EVOH) in a wide variety of applications such as food packaging, agricultural films, chemical bottles, and medical and pharmaceutical devices and packaging. When not working with polymers, Mike and his wife Judy are frequently cheering for their children Ian and Lilyanna as they play soccer.

Shaun Hael – Mitsubishi Gas Chemical America

Sustainability Through Combating Food Waste

Sean Hael is the Sales and Marketing Manager for Mitsubishi Gas Chemical America in the AGELESS Oxygen Absorbers division. With almost a decade in the packaging industry, Sean has collaborated with a wide variety of companies and brands to find unique packaging solutions to extend shelf life, reduce food waste, and eliminate preservatives using MGCA’s oxygen absorbing technologies. While the food industry is Sean’s primary focus, he has also worked extensively with companies in the pharmaceutical, microbiological, and historical preservation industries, which allows him to look at packaging challenges from a number of different perspectives.

Steven Grove – Nestle (Solon)

Dr. Stephen Grove is Manager for Food Safety and HACCP at the Nestlé Development Center in Solon, Ohio. In this role, he leads food safety and quality initiatives to support innovation teams across Nestlé’s global frozen and chilled food category, particularly in the areas of product design, challenge study support, process validation and HACCP development. Previously, Dr. Grove was Manager, Industry Projects and Research Assistant Professor at the Institute for Food Safety and Health at Illinois Institute of Technology where he was responsible for a variety of industry and government-funded research projects involving low moisture foods, fresh produce, and novel food processing methods.
Dr. Grove earned his Bachelor of Applied Science and Honours from RMIT University in Australia and completed his Ph.D. in Agricultural Science at the University of Tasmania