It is an absolute honor to get the opportunity to serve as President of Phi Tau Sigma, the Honor Society of Food Science and Technology. Society has been a hallmark for connecting, training, and recognizing the most accomplished in our field, and I am incredibly humbled to get to serve in such a renowned society that was founded in the very department I have had the pleasure of being a faculty.
Over the past year serving as President-Elect, I have observed some amazing progress and accomplishments by the society that build upon those of the previous year. I would like to thank Dr. Fanbin Kong for his amazing leadership as President last year, as well as for serving as an invaluable mentor for me to try to fill his shoes. During his Presidency, The Society has made incredible progress, guided by many others in our leadership. The Society has been able to get onto stable and optimistic financial and regulatory footing with the great efforts of our Treasurer Dr. Mary Schmidl. The Society has now been reinstated in active status as a nonprofit in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts along with the extensive and adept financial and regulatory work that Dr. Schmidl has done for us. Similarly, I would like to recognize the steadfast leadership and crucial contributions of our Executive Directors, Dr. Vanessa Zhang and Dr. Leslie Loehr-Kicklighter for the many important things they do that are foundational to the running of the society in filling in for the incredible contributions of Dr. Kathryn Kotula in her retirement and others. I would also like to acknowledge and thank the incredible work done this past year by all our chairs, directors, and liaisons; none of the progress I will discuss below was possible without them.
Over the past year, I have witnessed many advances The Society has made with their leadership, and the following are only a few examples. One major change that has been and is currently continuing is the optimization of our newsletter and website, the former of which is now electronic and well designed with the leadership of Dr. Zhang, Dr. Sasireka Rajendran, Dr Nuria Acevedo, and many others. Through the generosity of an amazing donor, we were also able to introduce the inaugural Phi Tau Sigma Mid-Career Accomplishment Award, as well as the change of the Special Recognition Award to the Dr. Kathryn L. Kotula Special Recognition Award to honor all the amazing contributions of Dr. Kotula.
Building upon a society strength, our society accomplished a lot in the support of students and young professionals. The society sponsored multiple student research competitions on regional and national levels; for example, the IFT Undergraduate Research Competition, as well as the IAFP 3 Minute Thesis and Food Safety Flash competitions, with the latter being a new competition. The society’s chapters were also incredibly active, hosting numerous events and hosting competitions, such as the Speedy Science competition by the Minnesota Chapter. The Society organized and hosted our 3rd National Research Competition, with a record number of submissions by graduate students and postdoctoral scholars across the country, all presenting their cutting-edge research.
The society also continued to support and be a valuable partner with multiple food science and agricultural societies, holding very successful networking events at the IFT and IAFP Annual Meetings, each with well over 30 attendees. The increasing and impressive strength of many of our existing chapters, as well as the addition of muhaveple new/reactivated chapters this past year, such as the University of Arkansas and University of Florida has been exciting to watch. I personally have seen incredible progress in the activity of our chapter at UMass under the leadership of some of our stellar students, including interfacing with other regional organizations for numerous events like Northeast IFT and the IFTSA student chapter here. It is particularly exiting time to be involved in food at UMass, with the recent announcement of the $120 million Future of Food Initiative, and I am excited to see how our chapter will become involved with it. As mentioned above, our membership numbers have continued to increase, and our chapters have become more engaged, this is with leadership of Dr. Boce Zhang and Dr. Navam Hettiarachchy among others.
As we get into our new year, I am excited for us to build upon these (and many other) great successes to continue to grow our society and further establish our presence and legacy in food science and related fields. Given the skill and excellence of our committee chairs, Executive Committee members, Board of Directors, and society liaisons, I have no doubt we will accomplish this.
I look forward to the opportunity to serve you, the members who make our society amazing. Please feel free to reach out to me any time at mdmoore@umass.edu with any suggestions, ideas, thoughts for improvement, or anything else. I look forward to continuing to build upon our tremendous growth of the previous year with you into 2027 and beyond.
About your Phi Tau Sigma President:
Matthew D. Moore, Ph.D. is a Lifetime Member of Phi Tau Sigma and an Associate Professor and Eric A. Decker Scholar in the Department of Food Science at the University of Massachusetts. He earned a B.S. in Food Science at Cornell University in 2010, where he did undergraduate research under the direction of Dr. Kathryn Boor and joined Phi Tau Sigma as an undergraduate. He earned his Ph.D. in Food Science under the direction of Dr. Lee-Ann Jaykus at North Carolina State University in 2016. After serving as a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Jaykus Lab, he joined the National Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2017 under the direction of Dr. Jason Folster prior to joining UMass in 2018.
His research focuses on food safety with a particular focus on foodborne and environmental viruses. His work involves better understanding enteric viral pathogenesis, as well as development of improved methods and technologies for detecting foodborne viruses and pathogens in foods and the environment. Further, his lab is also involved in better understanding and controlling foodborne viruses and pathogen transmission. He has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers and served in numerous leadership and editorial roles in microbiology. He is currently an Editor for the new journal ASM Food Microbiology and an Associate Editor for Food Microbiology. He is also serving on Editorial Boards for 5 other journals. He is currently Vice Chair for the IAFP Viral and Parasitic Foodborne Disease Professional Development Group, Treasurer and Board Member of the World Society for Virology, and Director-at-Large for the Northeast section of IFT (NEIFT).