Climate change causes disease-carrying insects to spread, they feed on blood infecting people and animals

Angelo Maggiore is a marine environmental scientist. Since 2014 he has been working as Scientific Officer in the Scientific Committee and Emerging Risks Unit of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). He is currently coordinating the EFSA climate change project and involved in other projects related with climate change (risk characterization of ciguatera food poisoning in the EU and cyanobacteria toxins in food). He has supported the EFSA Scientific Committee in the development of the Guidance to develop specific protection goals for environmental risk assessment at EFSA.

Aleksandra Lewandowska currently works for the Scientific Committee and Emerging Risks Unit at EFSA and contributed to the final stages of the CLEFSA project. She is a biotechnologist specialising in plant stress responses and will obtain her PhD in biotechnology and bioengineering from Universiteit Gent and Vrije Universiteit Brussel this academic year.

Ana Afonso is currently a.i. Head of Unit at EFSA Genetically Modified Organisms unit. She was Team Leader of the Emerging Risks Team since 2015 and in that role involved in the development of the CLEFSA project. She joined EFSA in 2006 working at the Animal Health Unit . She is a veterinarian specialized in Aquatic Veterinary studies and worked as a Veterinary official for the Ministry of Agriculture Nature Resources and Environment in Cyprus, as a Veterinary assistant for hygiene and animal health issues on fish farming and as a Researcher at the Portuguese Veterinary Faculty.

Agronomist specialised in plant protection and environment by training, I have been working for 13 years as Scientific Officer in the EFSA Scientific Committee and Emerging Risks Unit, coordinating groups of experts on various topics, such as botanical safety, risk assessment methodologies, risk-benefit assessment of fish consumption vs. exposure to methylmercury. Since September 2020, I have become Team Leader of Emerging Risks. My interest for this info session is on the methodologies used for the identification, characterisation and analysis of the emerging risks linked with climate changes, and whether these methodologies can be applied on other drivers for emerging risks, such as innovations in food/feed sector or circular economy, of relevance for EFSA’s remit of activity.

Jessika Giraldi works at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, in the Competence Centre on Text Mining and Analysis. She is involved in projects focused on monitoring research and innovation on emerging technologies using text mining tools such as TIM - 'Tools for Innovation Monitoring'. She also collaborates on the foresight activities within the Commission and she contributed to the development of the current ‘EU Foresight system on Emerging Environmental Issues’ during her previous position at DG Environment.

Jorge Diogène (Barcelona, 1962. PhD. in Applied and Fundamental Toxicology) is currently Senior Research Scientist and Head of the Marine and Continental Waters Program at IRTA (Catalonia, Spain). His research interests are oriented towards the evaluation of toxin production by microalgae and their presence in fish, shellfish and the environment, and method development for marine toxin quantification and risk assessment. J. Diogène actively collaborates with food safety agencies.

Doctor in Veterinary Medicine with a PhD in Epidemiology and control of Zoonoses from University of Bologna, he received the title of Docent in Zoonotic Bacteriology from the University of Helsinki in 2015. From 2013 to 2018 he was appointed as associate professor in Environmental Health at the University of Helsinki researching on genomic epidemiology of Campylobacter and other food-borne pathogens. Currently he is scientific officer at the European Food Safety Authority, Unit Biological Hazards and Contaminants.

Stefano Messori works at the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), where he serves for the Secretariat for the STAR-IDAZ IRC, a major international collaboration initiative to coordinate research on animal health at global level. In his current function, he directs research gap analyses and advises on the realignment of research programmes, in order to foster the development of animal health strategies and tools. Veterinarian by training, he holds a PhD in animal science and has been recognised as European Veterinary Specialist on Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law.

Currently head of EFSA’s Scientific Committee and Emerging Risks unit; the main task of the Scientific Committee is the preparation of scientific advice in the area of new and harmonised approaches for risk assessment of food and feed; included in this is putting in place a process for the early identification of emerging risks in the European food and feed chain, as well as preparation for responding to crises. He has been working for EFSA for over fourteen years, including a period as acting head of the Science Strategy Department. He has previously worked in the dairy industry and started his career at the Reading laboratory of the Institute of Food Research, working on microbiological food safety. He graduated from Cardiff University where he obtained both a degree and PhD in microbiology.

Dr. Cristina Tirado has been working at the interface between science and policy related to climate, health, nutrition, and sustainable food systems with WHO, FAO, UNEP, WB, governments, NGOs and universities worldwide. She is a professor on Climate, Food, Health and Sustainability policy at the Dept. of Political Science & International Relations of Loyola University and Tzu chi University in Taiwan. She is member of the UNFCCC Research constituency; she moderates the UN Standing Committee of Nutrition and Climate group and provides advice on transformative climate resilient food systems and the integration of health in the UNFCCC NDCs. She is a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 chapters on Health, Wellbeing and contributor of the chapters on Food, Desertification, African and Mediterranean Region and IPBES expert for the nexus climate change, food, water, health and biodiversity. She is co-founder & President of the Sustainability Health and Education (SHE) Foundation which facilitates investments and partnerships for integrated climate-resilient initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Tirado is a DVM, and a Fulbright Scholar with MS/PhD degrees in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences from Cornell University and she has authored numerous research and policy publications and books. http://www.environment.ucla.edu/people/cristina-tirado.php

Federica Barrucci is a statistician working as scientific officer at EFSA’s Assessment and Methodological Support Unit, where she supports the development, implementation and review of evidence-based risk assessment guidance, methodologies and tools. Previously, Federica worked at the Public Health and Risk Analysis Department of Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie. She has more than 10 years of experience in working on multidisciplinary projects, involving food microbiologists, chemists, veterinarians, epidemiologists, mathematicians, communication scientists and many others. She has a Master’s degree in statistics and economics and a PhD in statistics.

I am working at the EFSA GMO Unit since 2016, contributing to the risk assessment of genetically modified crops and supporting the management of the CLEFSA project. In the past, I worked in several scientific projects related to climate change uncertainties in agriculture, crop model intercomparison, science-policy interface and development of mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Jan C. Semenza works on environmental and social determinants of infectious diseases at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm. He was an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He also worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) and conducted public health projects in Uzbekistan, Sudan, Egypt, Denmark, Brazil, and Haiti. He taught epidemiology and environmental health in the Oregon Masters Program of Public Health.