Periodic Table of Food Initiative

Expertise: Agronomy, plant breeding

“As a scientist, I am alerted to the growing challenges to food, from health and safety to preference and sustainability, all in the context of a changing world. This program provides a unique environment to empower students with the knowledge they need to make wise decisions about where innovation will be most needed and solutions most effective. Big challenges need bold solutions.”

Dr. Bruce German is a professor and chemist of food science and technology at the University of California, Davis and the director for the university’s Foods for Health Institute. Dr. German’s work includes researching the role of fats and other components in the diet and developing ways to assess health and metabolism in response to foods. He uses milk as the model for the genetic blueprint for foods that support health, as milk evolves for the purpose of nourishing growing mammals. This evolutionary logic forms the basis of research for discovering physical, functional, and nutritional properties of milk components and applying these properties to foods.

Dr. German has published articles in more than 400 peer-reviewed publications, including Food in an Evolutionary Context and Nutrigenomics and Personalized Diets: What Will They Mean for Food? He has received honors as a Dean’s Distinguished Lecturer and a Distinguished Professor, and he was recognized by the Institute for Scientific Information as a Most Highly Cited Scientist.

Expertise: Maternal and child nutrition, agriculture, policy

Dariush Mozaffarian is a cardiologist, Special Advisor to the Provost, Dean for Policy, and Jean Mayer Professor at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy; and Professor of Medicine at Tufts School of Medicine. Dr. Mozaffarian has stepped away from his role as Dean for the 2022-23 academic year, returning on July 1, 2023, to focus on the translation and dissemination of scientific evidence into public awareness, policy, and innovation, including to help inform the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.  His work aims to create the science and translation for a food system that is nutritious, equitable, and sustainable.  Dr. Mozaffarian has authored more than 500 scientific publications on dietary priorities for obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases, and on evidence-based policy approaches and innovations to reduce diet-related diseases in the US and globally.  He has served in numerous advisory roles, and his work has been featured in a wide array of media outlets. Thomson Reuters has named him as one of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds.

Dr. Mozaffarian received a BS in biological sciences at Stanford (Phi Beta Kappa), MD at Columbia (Alpha Omega Alpha), residency training in internal medicine at Stanford, fellowship training in cardiovascular medicine at the University of Washington; an MPH from the University of Washington; and a Doctorate in Public Health from Harvard.  Before being appointed as Dean at Tufts in 2014, Dr. Mozaffarian was at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health for a decade and clinically active in cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  He is married, has three children, and actively trains as a Third Degree Black Belt in Taekwondo.

As one of the top nutrition institutions in the world, the Friedman School’s mission is to produce trusted science, future leaders, and real-world impact.  The Friedman School pursues research, education, and public impact across five Divisions, the Feinstein International Center, the Food & Nutrition Innovation Institute, and multiple academic programs.  Areas of focus range from cell to society, including: molecular nutrition, human metabolism and clinical trials, nutrition data science, behavior change, business innovation and entrepreneurship, community and organizational interventions, communication and media, agriculture, food systems, and sustainability, hunger and food security, humanitarian crisis, and food policy and economics.  Friedman School graduates are leaders in academia, US and international government, policy, advocacy, industry, public health, community service, and entrepreneurship.  The School’s unique breadth, engagement with the world, and entrepreneurial spirit make it a leading institution for nutrition education, research, and public impact.

Expertise: Public health, nutrition

Expertise: Computational and systems biology, nutrition, gene regulation

Howard has been involved with sustainable agricultural and agroforestry systems, pattern recognition, plant breeding, molecular biology and genetics for over 40 years releasing hundreds of cultivars into the public domain. He has worked with indigenous communities, NGO’s, governmental agencies and the private sector around the world. A former university professor for 15 years, Fulbright Scholar, Ford Foundation Fellow, in 2007 Howard was made a Fellow of the World Agroforestry Centre and authored the IAASTD chapter on Biotechnology and Biodiversity. He was a founding member of the Keystone Roundtable on Sustainable Agriculture, co-chair of the 1st and 2nd World Congress of Agroforestry and is Chairperson of the External Advisory Board of the Agriculture Sustainability Institute at UC Davis. In 2009 he was named recipient of The Award of Distinction from The College of agriculture and Environmental Sciences, UC Davis. He led the global effort sequencing, assembling and annotating the Theobroma cacao genome and is part of the leadership team for the Arachis genome global effort. In 2010 he was named a Senior Fellow, Plant Sciences, the University of California, Davis. September 2011, he announced the formation of the African Orphan Crops Consortium, set up to sequence, assemble and annotate 101 of the key African food crops in order to breed more nutritious plants. He as well set up the African Plant Breeding Academy with UC Davis at the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi which opened the 3rd of December 2013. He has served on both for profit and NGO boards.

He collects and restores classic American, modern Japanese and Italian motorcycles. He recently became a member of the 200 Mile Per Hour Club on an unrestricted 1999 Suzuki Hayabusa. Averaging 201.386 MPH.

Expertise: Clinical proteomics, analytical chemistry

Barbara received her Ph.D. from Massey University (New Zealand) in 1997, and bachelor’s degree from University of California, Davis, in nutrition science and environmental toxicology in 1983. 

From 2016 to 2021 she was professor at Massey University in the College of Health Sciences, and since then as adjunct professor at  Massey’s Riddet Institute. Prior to this role, she worked for 16 years at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, as Senior Nutrition Officer and then as Chief/ Deputy Director of Nutrition.  Before joining FAO, Professor Burlingame spent 12 years as Nutrition Programme Leader at the New Zealand Institute for Crop & Food Research and Department of Scientific and Industrial Research; and two years as an analyst at the National University of Singapore. Since 1982 when she was awarded a research grant from UC Davis’s President’s Undergraduate Fund for work on trace alkali metal analyses, food composition has been a major focus of her work. 

She was coordinator of the International Network of Food Data Systems from 1993-2011, Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier’s Journal of Food Composition and Analysis from 1998-2010, and lecturer in the Wageningen/UNU food composition course from 1996-2013.  In addition to global level food composition activities, she  has had a 30+ year relationship with both OCEANIAFOODS and ASEANFOODS, and active involvement with food composition programs in every region of the world. She has more than 150 publications on various aspects of food composition, including national and regional tables and databases, guidelines/manuals on laboratory procedures from sampling and sample preparation, to data documentation, dissemination, and use; papers in peer-reviewed journals, books, and book chapters on many different aspects, including  integrating food composition into a range of sectors and disciplines. 

She has been a member of many scientific advisory boards and international committees; author of many scientific papers and UN publications, book chapters and reference books; and editor of several food and nutrition journals, including 13 years as, and currently as Specialty Chief Editor at Frontiers. 

Barbara chairs the Sustainable Diets Task Force for the International Union of Nutritional Sciences,  she is a member of the Global-Hub on Indigenous Peoples’ Food and Knowledge Systems, co-chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub, and she recently completed two terms as a member of the  Steering Committee of the High Level Panel of Experts for the Committee on World Food Security.  She is a Council member and Fellow of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences.