Barbara Kowalcyk, nationally recognized expert in food safety with training in epidemiology, public health informatics, risk science, regulatory decision-making, and public policy, was named the inaugural director of the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security (IFSAN) at the Milken Institute SPH in September 2023. The new Institute will advance food systems that promote public health and prevent illness.
Kowalcyk came to the Milken Institute SPH from her role as Director of the Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention (CFI) at The Ohio State University, where she also served as faculty in the Department of Food Science and Technology and the Translational Data Analytics Institute. Since her son, Kevin, died at age 2 1/2 due to complications from an E. coli O157:H7 infection in 2001, she has devoted her career to protecting the public from contaminated food sources. In 2006, she co-founded CFI with her mother, Patricia Buck, a food safety advocate and educator and, in 2019, brought CFI to The Ohio State University.
“We are excited to have Barbara Kowalcyk join the Milken Institute SPH, bringing her passion for science-based solutions to protecting our food supply,” said Lynn R. Goldman, Michael and Lori Milken Dean of Public Health at the Milken Institute SPH. “Her decades of leadership on these issues, combined with the resources and proximity to the federal government that our school provides, will position IFSAN as a leading voice on this issue.”
Kowlacyk currently serves as Chair of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Science Board and has served on numerous other advisory committees, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Board of Scientific Counselors Food Safety Modernization Act Surveillance Working Group. She also co-authored a report by the National Academy of Sciences that became the blueprint for the Act, signed by President Barack Obama in 2011, which was the first major reform of food oversight at the FDA since 1938.
“I am thrilled to be at the helm of IFSAN,” Kowalcyk said. “For over 20 years, I have worked to put in place risk-informed, systems-based approaches to food safety. At GW, these efforts will expand to include nutrition security, which considers equitable access to safe, nutritious and affordable food that promotes health and well-being. Too often, efforts to improve food safety, nutrition and food security are siloed, leading to unintended consequences. This new Institute will advance integrated approaches to addressing existing and emerging food safety and nutrition security problems in the U.S. and abroad.”
Kowlacyk received a B.A. in Mathematics from University of Dayton in 1991 and an M.A. in Applied Statistics from the University of Pittsburgh in 1993. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in Environmental Health (Epidemiology/Biostatistics) from the University of Cincinnati in 2011.