PTFI Core Team
Meet the Core Team powering the Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI).
This cross-institutional team brings together deep expertise in biology, analytical chemistry, sustainable food systems, agriculture, food composition, multi-omics analysis, clinical nutrition, health, data science, and technology. Together, they steward the initiative’s vision to transform how we understand and leverage food for supporting human and planetary health.
The PTFI is an initiative of The Rockefeller Foundation and is collectively managed by the PTFI Secretariat, led by the American Heart Association and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT. Verso Biosciences leads the development of PTFI’s standardized multi-omics tools, while Colorado State University spearheads the global onboarding of PTFI multi-omics tools.
Explore the individuals and institutions driving this global effort below.
Leadership
Selena Ahmed
Global Director, PTFI; Dean, Food EDU American Heart Association
Selena Ahmed is the Global Director of the Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) and the Dean of Food EDU based at the American Heart Association. She has carried out food systems research and outreach for the past 20 years with the goals of informing solutions to enhance human and planetary health. Her science for impact efforts have focused on: agrobiodiversity and traditional knowledge for conservation and nutrition; climate effects on food quality for climate resilience; co-creating food environment frameworks and measurements for food security; sustainable diet interventions for mitigating diet-related chronic disease and; community-engaged research with Indigenous communities to celebrate diverse ways of knowing. Selena joined the PTFI from Montana State University where she was an Associate Professor of Sustainable Food Systems and Director of the Translational Biomarkers Core lab facility. She brings transdisciplinary training including a postdoctoral fellowship in chemical ecology and human clinical nutrition, PhD in biology / plant sciences, MSc in ethnobotany / cultural anthropology, and BA in economics. Selena lives with her family in Bozeman, Montana.
The Rockefeller Foundation
John de la Parra
Director, Global Food Portfolio
The Rockefeller Foundation
Dr. John de la Parra is an ethnobotanist and plant chemist with expertise in medicinal plants and food crops. He grew up on a small farm in rural Alabama, with his family originating in México and South America. His grandmother’s early teachings on plants inspired him to work with indigenous populations to understand how phenotypic selection influences healthful plant chemistry and food choice.
John received his PhD in Chemistry from Northeastern University and has additional certifications in horticulture, botanical authentication, and modern chromatographic techniques. He is an Associate of the Harvard University Herbaria where he regularly delivers lectures and has redeveloped the course “Plants and Human Affairs”, which has been taught at Harvard since 1876 and represents the oldest course in the United States focused on plants and their uses. John has held appointments as a Lecturer at both Tufts University (teaching plant science and fieldwork classes) and Northeastern University (teaching agricultural biotechnology) and he previously served as a Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab where he studied chemotypic variability in food plants.
American Heart Association
Tammy Gregory
Executive VP of Healthcare Business Solutions
American Heart Association
Tammy has been with the organization for 23 years. Prior to current her role, Tammy served in the South West Affiliate for 3 years as the Senior Vice President for Health Strategies and before that she spent 14 years at National Center in American Stroke Association and Quality Improvement.
Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT
Maya Rajasekharan
Director of Strategy Integration and Engagement
Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT
Maya joins the PTFI from the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) – a CGIAR Center, where she has an integrative leadership role developing and implementing center strategy and programs. She coordinated a global portfolio of programs and cross–functional units across Africa, Asia and Latin America, and led co-creation of research strategies. With more than 15 years of experience living and working internationally, Maya brings a global perspective of food systems and expertise stewarding partnerships with a wide range of stakeholders. More recently, she served as the co-steward for the development One CGIAR 2030 strategy for research and innovation. Earlier, Maya held assignments at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the Asoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE). Maya has a PhD in Marine Ecology from University College Dublin, Ireland.
The Rockefeller Foundation
Roy Steiner
Senior Vice President for the Food Initiative
The Rockefeller Foundation
Roy Steiner, PhD, is the Senior Vice President for the Food Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation, where he leads a team focused on creating access to nourishing food for millions of people in the U.S. and around the world, supporting scientific advances in human nutrition and sustainable food production, and carrying forward the Foundation’s enduring commitment to a sustainable Green Revolution in Africa.
Roy comes to The Rockefeller Foundation from the Omidyar Network, where he served as Director of the Intellectual Capital team since 2015, focused on helping Omidyar achieve its strategic objectives at all levels including in the agriculture space. He dedicated nearly a decade of his career to leadership positions at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he was a founding member of the Agricultural Development initiative and was instrumental in working with The Rockefeller Foundation to develop the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, or AGRA. His work for Gates was central to the creation of Ethiopia’s Agricultural Transformation Agency, or ATA, which helps accelerate the growth and transformation of Ethiopia’s agriculture sector, and dozens of other partnerships that are critical to the fight against food insecurity around the world.
Before the Gates Foundation, Roy spent eight years in Africa where he was founder and CEO of Cyberplex Africa, one of the largest web development and knowledge management companies in southern Africa. Early in his career, he was an original founder and managing director of Africa Online, which pioneered the delivery of Internet service in Zimbabwe. Additionally, he was a founding member of CH2MHill’s Strategies Group and has consulted for McKinsey & Company in the areas of technology innovation, growth strategies and international development.
Roy holds a PhD and a Master of Science in agricultural and biological engineering with minors in economics and international development from Cornell University, as well as two bachelor degrees in mechanical engineering and biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Founder, Verso Biosciences
Steve Watkins
Chief of Science & Technology
Founder, Verso Biosciences
Steve Watkins received his PhD in Food Science from the University of California, Davis in 1998. Following a short post-doc he founded an early metabolomics company called Lipomics Technologies in 2000. Steve served as CSO and eventually CEO of Lipomics from 2000 to 2008, when the company was sold to the clinical diagnostics company Tethys Bioscience. At Tethys he served as chief technology officer, running the metabolomics, proteomics and biostatistics groups focused on novel biomarker and diagnostic development. In 2011 and 2012, Steve was a Senior visiting scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health. In 2012, Steve bought the Lipomics assets back from Tethys and merged with the metabolomics technology company Metabolon, where he served as CTO from 2012-2016. He is currently a founder and director of Verso Biosciences, and the CEO of BCD Bioscience. Steve is an author on over 80 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters, and is an inventor on numerous patents (link).
PTFI Secretariat Members
Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT
Jenny Johana Gallo Franco, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT
Jenny Gallo is a biologist with a strong interest in food data science and a passion for understanding complex biological systems through data-driven approaches. She holds a Master of Science in Biology and a Ph.D. in Engineering and Applied Sciences, and her work sits at the intersection of omics technologies, data science, and food systems.
As a postdoctoral fellow at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, Dr. Gallo leads the integration of the Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) platforms across diverse agricultural and food systems projects. Her research focuses on developing standardized tools and protocols for food composition and metadata analysis, from analytical chemistry workflows to interoperable data infrastructures, while fostering the collaborations needed to put high-quality data into practice. Through this work, she aims to drive a new generation of data-informed solutions that support healthier diets, more resilient food systems, and improved planetary well-being.
American Heart Association
Sarah C. Brinkley, Ph.D.
Sr. Program Manager
American Heart Association
Sarah Brinkley, Ph.D. joins the PTFI from the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) – a CGIAR Center, where she is a Postdoctoral Fellow leading the Food Sampling Strategy workstream. At the PTFI, Sarah endeavors to draw complex connections between growing environment, management, plant health, and crop quality through collecting standardized, high-quality metadata. Her perennial goal is to cultivate research among diverse, international teams of food systems experts toward a more just and food-secure future.
Sarah has strong expertise in biochemical food composition including multi-omics method development, solid qualitative and quantitative data analysis skills including proficiency in the R programming language, and excellent verbal and written communication skills, as evidenced by her successfully funded grant proposals totaling over UD$100,000, and dozens of local, national, and international scientific presentations to diverse audiences.
Sarah is a graduate of Texas A&M University’s Ph.D. program in the Department of Horticultural Sciences. Her work is informed by a diverse background working internationally in coffee and wine, bolstered by an M.S. degree in chemistry from Tennessee Technological University. Her research uses participatory methods to investigate how farming and postharvest practices impact crop quality.
Sarah’s love and curiosity about food are deeply rooted in the food traditions of the American South: soul food. Bitter, smoky collard greens and her Grandmother’s buttery, crumbling cornbread are some of her favorites.
American Heart Association
Jackie Bertoldo, DrPH, MPH, RDN
Senior Program Lead
American Heart Association
Jackie Bertoldo is Senior Product/Curriculum Manager for Food EDU and Good Food Fellows at the American Heart Association. She brings over a decade of experience advancing experiential food systems education and innovative nutrition and sustainability programs in higher education, healthcare, and business. She is a leader in translating food and nutrition research into practical strategies for guiding institutional policy and practice, championing community-based strategies that address public health imperatives such as sugar sweetened beverage consumption, food insecurity, food waste, and sustainable food procurement.
American Heart Association
Kevin Cody, PhD
Senior Program Manager
American Heart Association
Kevin Cody is Senior Program Manager for Food EDU and Good Food Fellows at the American Heart Association. As an educator, Kevin’s work is inspired by commitments to improve farmer livelihoods and food system sustainability through innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning. In addition to teaching courses for undergraduate and graduate students on topics ranging from organic horticulture to sustainable development, his work with non-profit organizations includes promoting supply chain integration in local food systems and developing pathways to generate and sustain beginning farmers.
Prior to his role with the American Heart Association, Kevin served as the Hoch Cunningham Professor of the Practice in Food Systems at Tufts University, teaching courses on agroecology and food systems that integrated his work training new and beginning farmers with New Entry Sustainable Farming Project. Previously, as a faculty member in Environmental and Sustainability Studies at the University of Northern Colorado, he developed experiential and community-engaged courses on food systems and managed the university’s student farm program.
Kevin received his PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he examined the internationalization of alternative food networks and barriers to the long-term viability of beginning farmers.
American Heart Association
Nile Nair, Ph.D.
Senior Program Manager
American Heart Association
Dr. Nile Nair is the Senior Manager of Research and Translation at the Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI), based at the American Heart Association. He leads efforts to translate cutting-edge food composition, multi-omics, and biomolecular data into actionable insights that advance precision nutrition, sustainable diets, and climate-resilient health strategies.
Trained as a clinician-scientist with a PhD in Population Health Sciences from Harvard, Nile specializes in nutritional epidemiology, sustainable food systems, and climate change. His research spans sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Pacific Islands, focusing on systems-based approaches to dietary health, food quality, and environmental sustainability. He has worked extensively on the development of the Planetary Health Diet Index (PHDI) and has contributed to national food composition datasets, randomized controlled trials, multi-omics research, and policy efforts aimed at reducing diet-related chronic diseases and food system emissions.
He brings a decade of experience across clinical, academic, and policy spheres, and remains committed to advancing inclusive, science-driven solutions that center biodiversity, Indigenous knowledge, and equity in shaping the future of food.
American Heart Association
Jillian Pavich, Ph.D.
Senior Program Manager
American Heart Association
Dr. Jillian Pavich is Lab Ecosystem Senior Program Manager with the Periodic Table of Foods Initiative (PTFI) at the American Heart Association. She is a plant pathologist and has over 20 years of experience as a research scientist, developing public-private partnerships, managing intellectual property and ushering research to impact. Jillian joined the PTFI from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the Bureau of Resilience, Environment and Food Security where she was a Development Officer and Plant Pathologist in Washington D.C. She also spent over 10 years managing a global molecular plant pathology lab working on critical diseases of rice and corn. She earned a B.S. in Biology from SUNY Fredonia, a M.S. in Plant Pathology and a PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from Colorado State University.
Technology and Onboarding Team
Co-founder, Verso Bioscience
Chi-Ming Chien
Lead, Database Workstream
Co-founder, Verso Bioscience
Chi-Ming Chien is a co-founder and Principal of Dayspring, a San Francisco digital consultancy specializing in brand design, web design, custom web and mobile applications, and Salesforce consulting. At Dayspring, Chi-Ming is responsible for client satisfaction and business development. Development efforts he has overseen include Web community sites, a suite of customer self-service Web applications for a leading U.S. educational assessment publisher, e-commerce storefronts for start-ups, and play-call analysis tools.
His clients have included Fortune 50 companies, top educational institutions, Web startups, VC firms and non-profits with organizations as diverse as the Golden State Warriors, CTB/McGraw-Hill, Constellation Brands, the Clorox Company, UCSF, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Kleiner Perkins, and Accel Partners. His expertise ranges from Web programming to database architecture to networks and performance. He focuses Dayspring on delivering the right solution in a highly responsive way.
Prior to co-founding Dayspring, Chi-Ming worked as a software consultant at Sapient Corporation developing user interface for and subsequently managing the deployment of an enterprise-wide, highly available platform for the national call center of a major bank. Chi-Ming’s responsibilities included managing the production support team that provided 24/7 support for a system that supported business banking customers through online, touch-telephone and agent channels.
Chi-Ming graduated with distinction from Stanford University with bachelor and master degrees in electrical engineering, focusing on computer architecture and network systems.
Verso Biosciences
Tracy Shafizadeh. Ph.D.
Director, Programs & Partnerships
Verso Biosciences
Dr. Tracy Shafizadeh is a nutritional scientist with over 15 years of experience in scientific communications and life science research. Prior to joining Verso Biosciences and the PTFI, she served as the Director of Scientific Communications at Evolve BioSystems, and led product development and research services at various start-up life science companies including Lipomics Technologies, Tethys Bioscience and Metabolon. Dr. Shafizadeh received her PhD in nutritional biology from UC Davis, studying intestinal development and folate metabolism in newborns.
Co-Founder, Verso Biosciences
Troy Viss
Designer
Co-Founder, Verso Biosciences
Troy Viss is a designer, builder, creative director, illustrator, and artist. With over three decades of experience, he has held senior design management and executive creative positions in publishing, educational assessment, feature film entertainment, and health education.
As a co-founder of Verso Biosciences, Troy provides design direction focused on data visualization, user experience, interface design and strategic brand integration. Additionally, through his design firm Viss Company, Troy maintains an active consulting practice, offering brand, communication, and technology design services to a diverse range of clients, from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies. Past clients include Constellation Brands, CTB/McGraw-Hill, Hewlett Packard, Macmillan Publishers, National Geographic, Robert Mondavi Winery, Standard Chartered, and The University of California, Davis.
A graduate of The University of California, San Diego with a bachelor’s degree in communication, Troy is deeply passionate about leveraging design as the critical differentiator for elevating products and services from increasingly competitive markets, and delivering memorable experiences that inspire, engage, and delight.
Colorado State University
Jessica Prenni, Ph.D.
Professor, College of Agricultural Sciences
Colorado State University
Dr. Prenni received her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Colorado, Boulder followed by post-doctoral training at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. She has over 20 years of experience in biological mass spectrometry and served for over ten years at the Director of the Proteomics and Metabolomics Core Facility at Colorado State University (CSU). During this time, her group developed novel approaches in metabolomics for analytical methods and data analysis including the RAMClustR algorithm for metabolite clustering and annotation.
Presently, Dr. Prenni is a Professor in the Department of Horticulture at CSU where the overall theme of her research is the application of mass spectrometry to address important issues in food safety and quality. Current projects are focused on the use of mass spectrometry to (1) dissect complex genotype by environment (GxE) interactions, including the microbiome, in plant and animal systems (2) develop novel approaches using ambient ionization for characterization of food quality and authenticity (3) perform sensitive and rapid quantification of drug and chemical residues in food products (4) develop novel methods for metabolomics sample preparation, data acquisition, and informatics. Dr. Prenni has authored over 110 peer-reviewed publications and is an active member of the mass spectrometry community.
Colorado State University
Melanie Odenkirk, Ph.D.
Research Scientist, Jessica Prenni Lab, College of Agricultural Sciences
Colorado State University
Dr. Melanie Odenkirk (she/her) is a member of Dr. Jessica Prenni’s laboratory in the Department of Horticulture at Colorado State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from North Carolina State University, where she advanced mass spectrometry techniques and developed innovative cheminformatics tools to investigate the role of lipids in disease. Following her doctoral studies, Melanie undertook post-doctoral training at the University of Arizona, contributing to the establishment of analytical and informatic workflows that integrated lipidomics into the exploration of membrane protein-lipid interactions.
Leveraging over a decade of experience in mass spectrometry, coupled with her enthusiasm for data analysis and scientific communication, Melanie is engaged in independent research on small molecules. She also plays a pivotal role in the onboarding of PTFI analytical methods for laboratories across the world.
Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI)
Katie Fromuth
Onboarding and Logistics Program Manager
Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI)
Katie Fromuth is a food and fermentation scientist with expertise in brewing science, project management, and scientific education. She currently serves as the Onboarding and Logistics Program Manager for the Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI), where she develops international laboratory Omics training curricula and oversees standardized metadata and sample management workflows across a global network of partner laboratories.
Prior to joining PTFI, Katie was the Quality Lab Director for Colorado State University’s Fermentation Science and Technology program, where she developed analytical, microbiological, and sensory coursework, mentored student researchers, and managed the Anheuser-Busch Quality Laboratory. She later joined the Brewers Association, the national trade organization for the U.S. craft beer industry, where she managed technical brewing projects, collaborated with supply chain stakeholders, administered a competitive research grant program, and coordinated scientific programming for the Craft Brewers Conference.
Katie is also an international beer judge and has served at major competitions including the Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup. She earned her M.S. in Horticulture from Colorado State University, focusing on agricultural chemistry. Her graduate research used non-targeted metabolomics to investigate chemical aging differences between canned and bottled beer. Katie is known for translating complex scientific concepts into clear, practical insights for both academic and industry audiences.
PTFI Secretariat
A coalition of the American Heart Association and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT serves as the Secretariat for the PTFI, providing operational project management and facilitating a multi-stakeholder partnership. The Secretariat leads strategic engagements and communication strategies, positioning PTFI as a truly global, diverse, multi-sectoral, and culturally/geographically representative group of collaborators, partners, and stakeholders.
Funding Partners
