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2012 Symposium Speaker


John W. Erdman Jr., Ph.D.
University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA

Dr. Erdman is Emeritus Professor of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Professor of Internal Medicine and Professor of Nutrition in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana.  Dr. Erdman's training and expertise encompass the nutritional and physiological biochemistry of man and animals.  He has authored over 170 original research articles on these subjects and has over 300 total publications including other articles and chapters.  He is a member of a variety of professional organizations including the American Society for Nutrition (ASN), the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), and the American Heart Association (AHA).  He is past President of the American Society for Nutritional Sciences (now ASN), has been elected Fellow for ASN,  AHA and IFT.  He has been extensively involved with the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences (NAS), where he served on the FNB for 9 years, 6 as Vice Chair.  Among other committees of the FNB, he served as Chair of the Standing Committee on the Scientific Evaluation of Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) and is currently Chair of the Committee on Military Nutrition Research.  Recently this committee published the report "Nutrition and Traumatic Brain Injury".  For his extensive contributions to the NAS, he was named as Lifetime National Associate of the NAS in 2001 and was elected as a Member of the Institute of Medicine, NAS in 2003.  Other honors include: receipt of the Samuel Cate Prescott Award for Research and the William Cruess Award for Teaching from IFT: the Borden Award from ASN; being named as an Original Member in Agricultural Science by ISI as an Highly Cited Researcher (top 0.05%); and several University of Illinois Excellent and Outstanding Teaching awards.  He is a member of the Board of Trustees of ILSI- NA.  Dr. Erdman has is past Executive Director of the Mars Science Advisory Council and is currently Executive Director of the Wrigley Science Institute.  Dr Erdman received his B.S., M.S., M.Ph., and Ph.D. in Food Science from Rutgers University.