Our team | Food Protection and Defense Institute

Debra Freedman, PhD

Director, Food Protection and Defense Institute
Education Manager, College of Veterinary Medicine

Dr. Freedman is an experienced educator, curriculum scholar, and researcher. She has worked at FPDI since 2014, collaborating with researchers and scholars, government officials (USDA, FDA, DHS), food industry professionals, public school teachers, and Emergency Responders (e.g., Rapid Response Teams, Law Enforcement). Her focus is on development of food defense curricula, online learning programs, learning objects, workshops, certificate programs, professional courses, and training guides.

Jennifer van de Ligt, PhD

Senior Advisor, Food Protection and Defense Institute
Associate Professor, College of Veterinary Medicine

Dr. van de Ligt has an extensive background in food defense, animal feed and human food production, human and animal nutrition, systems modeling, and scientific and regulatory affairs, with academic, industry, and global perspectives. Dr. van de Ligt provides consultation of global scientific and regulatory affairs for many major multinational food companies and has more than 130 global patents and patent applications.

Amy Kircher, DrPH

Associate Vice President for Research, University of Minnesota
Co-Director, Strategic Partnerships and Research Collaborative
Senior Advisor, Food Protection and Defense Institute
Assistant Professor, College of Veterinary Medicine

Dr. Kircher researches identification and warning of food disruptions through data fusion and analysis. Previously, Dr. Kircher held epidemiologist positions at NORAD - US Northern Command - and with the US Air Force, where she worked on health informatics, biosurveillance, and data analytics.

John T. Hoffman

Senior Research Fellow, Food Protection and Defense Institute
Colonel, USA, Retired

After a thirty year military career, Col. Hoffman served as the first Food and Agriculture Infrastructure Program Manager within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Infrastructure Protection Directorate. Col. Hoffman works with government and industry to document and assess vulnerabilities within the national food and agriculture sector, identify effective mitigation steps, and build resilience into these critical national supply chains to assist in the implementation of our national health security.

Stephen Streng

Research Development Strategist, Strategic Partnerships and Research Collaborative
Senior Advisor, Food Protection and Defense Institute

Stephen Streng initiated FPDI's cybersecurity research and education efforts in 2015 by organizing the first Food Industry Cybersecurity Summit (Washington, D.C. 2016) and is the author of the white paper, Adulterating More Than Food: The Cyber Risk to Food Processing and Manufacturing. He is a 2022 National Science Foundation Trusted CI Open Science Cybersecurity Fellow.

Food Protection and Defense Institute

University of Minnesota
1365 Gortner Ave.
St. Paul, MN 55108

[email protected]