Dr. Felicia Wu is the John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Food Science & Human Nutrition and Agricultural, Food, & Resource Economics at Michigan State University (MSU). She earned her A.B. and S.M. in Applied Mathematics and Medical Sciences at Harvard University, and her PhD in Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research and teaching focus on the national and global burden of foodborne disease; how regulations affect global trade networks and influence chemical exposures; the effect of in utero chemical exposures, nutrition, and socioeconomic factors on infant immunity; and the cost-effectiveness of strategies to improve food safety along supply chains in the United States and worldwide. Recently, her work has expanded to examine the risk of antimicrobial resistance from antibiotic use in livestock production. For her research on the impact of aflatoxin regulations on global liver cancer risk, Dr. Wu was awarded a US National Institutes of Health (NIH) EUREKA Award. She was commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) to estimate the global burden of disease caused by aflatoxin and arsenic in food, and co-authored the WHO 2015 report on the Global Burden of Foodborne Disease.
Currently, Dr. Wu serves as an expert advisor to the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) of the United Nations. She is an area editor for two journals: Risk Analysis and World Mycotoxin Journal, and on the editorial board of Archives of Environmental and Occupational Health. Recently, she served on the US National Academy of Sciences panel on the future of animal sciences research for global food security. She also served as an invited reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report on the topics of land use and food security. Dr. Wu was selected to serve on the MSU Presidential Search Committee, and now serves on the Presidential Transition Committee. She has received funding from multiple sources including the NIH, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, ILSI, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).