The Department of Nutritional Sciences at the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences is holding a seminar at 11 a.m. on Friday, April 21, 2023, in New Brunswick.

“Hans Fisher Lectureship: Enhancing the Purpose of Food”

Presented by: Patrick Stover, Institute for Advancing Health Through Agriculture, Texas A&M University

Abstract: 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, will be essential to position agriculture as the solution to human health, environmental health, and economic health. This presentation will address the opportunities and challenges in addressing some of our most pressing societal challenges through food systems, using the experiences of folic acid fortification as an illustrative example.

About the presenter: Patrick Stover is the director of the Institute for Advancing Health through Agriculture at Texas A&M University, where he also is a professor of biochemistry and biophysics. The institute brings together precision nutrition, responsive agriculture, and behavioral research to reduce diet-related chronic disease in a way that considers environmental and economic effects. Stover is an international leader in biochemistry, agriculture, and nutrition, and his 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 received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Clinton, the government’s highest honor bestowed on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers. Stover is the former vice chancellor and dean for agriculture and life sciences at Texas A&M AgriLife and was director of the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. He received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Saint Joseph’s University and a doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biophysics from the Medical College of Virginia, and he completed his postdoctoral studies in nutritional sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

New Jersey Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health – Room 101, 61 Dudley Rd., Cook Campus, New Brunswick, NJ

Free and open to the public. Advance registration is requested: go.rutgers.edu/x8okn8dq. For more information, contact associate professor of nutritional sciences Harini Sampath at harini.sampath@rutgers.edu. This event is part of the department’s seminar speaker series.