Elsa Murano was sworn in as the under secretary for food safety.

Before joining USDA, from 1997 until being sworn in to this position in October 2001 Murano served as the director of the Center for Food Safety within the Institute of Food Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. During this time she also served on the university’s Department of Animal Science Research Advisory Committee, plus the Food Safety Response Team of the Texas Agriculture Extension Service, and served from 1999-2001 as the chair of the Food Safety State Initiative Committee of the Texas Agriculture Experiment Station. She held the position of the Center for Food Safety’s associate director from 1995-97. In 2000 she was appointed professor in the university’s Department of Animal Science, after having been an associate professor in that Department from 1995-2000. 

Murano served as a professor-in-charge of research programs at the Linear Accelerator Facility at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa from 1992-95. From 1990-95 she was an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Preventive Medicine at that university. 

A native of Havana, Cuba, Murano holds a B.S. degree in biological sciences from Florida International University in Miami, plus an M.S. degree in anaerobic microbiology and a Ph.D. degree in food science and technology, both from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va. 

Cathy Woteki, the previous under secretary for food safety, held that position from August 1997 until January 2001 and is now a senior research scientist, concentrating on food safety and human nutrition, with the University of Maryland at College Park. In January she is to become dean of the College of Agriculture at Iowa State University.¤