Webinar: Enhancing the purpose of food

Historically, agriculture and food systems were designed to produce food, fiber, and fuel in abundance to ensure agricultural products were plentiful, affordable and accessible. Presently, agriculture and food systems have additional expectations with respect to supporting human health and lowering health care costs, protecting the environment, and ensuring producer profitability. As highlighted in recent National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reports, achieving these outcomes will require knowledge of the complex, dynamic systems associated with food, human health, the environment and the economy, and their interactions. Furthermore, advancements in understanding fundamental biological systems and their dynamics, and the development of next generation sensors, biomarkers and  data science applications, while maintaining planetary biodiversity will be essential to position agriculture as a solution to human health, environmental health and economic health. 

Speaker biography

Patrick Stover, Ph.D., is the Director of the Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture (IHA) at Texas A&M University. The IHA is the world’s first research institute to bring together precision nutrition, responsive agriculture, and behavioural research to reduce diet-related chronic disease in a way that considers environmental and economic effects.

As an international leader in biochemistry, agriculture and nutrition, Stover’s research focuses on the biochemical, genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that underlie the relationships among nutrition, food fortification and human pathologies such as developmental anomalies, neuropathies and cancer. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is former president of the American Society for Nutrition and has served two terms on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board. He received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Clinton, the government’s highest honour bestowed on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers.

He has over 23 years of academic leadership experience, serving as vice chancellor and dean for agriculture and life sciences at Texas A&M AgriLife, Director of Texas A&M AgriLife Research, and Director of the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. He received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Saint Joseph’s University, a doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biophysics from the Medical College of Virginia and completed his postdoctoral studies in nutritional sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

Moderator

Dr Luz Maria De-Regil, Unit Head, Multisectoral Action in Food Systems (AFS), Department of Nutrition and Food Safety (NFS)