Professional Profile
Jennifer van de Ligt, Ph.D., has an extensive background in animal feed and human food production, nutrition, safety, and regulations, with academic, industry, and global perspectives. Her research and industry experience span areas including development of novel food and feed ingredients, consumer packaged goods labeling compliance for global product launches, scientific substantiation of product claims, food defense and intentional adulteration vulnerability assessment and mitigation, basic research on the immunological impact of nutritional strategies, feed supply-chain risk management for viral pathogens, and more.
Prior to joining ToxStrategies, Dr. van de Ligt was a Professor at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine and Director of the Integrated Food Systems Leadership program. As Director of the Food Protection and Defense Institute (FPDI), an Emeritus Homeland Security Center of Excellence, she was instrumental in building collaborations to ensure national nutritional security through advancing food and feed safety, defense, and supply-chain resiliency while transitioning solutions to the food industry.
Dr. van de Ligt previously held numerous leadership positions at a global food, agricultural, financial, and industrial products company operating in 70 countries where she provided nutrition and regulatory expertise for a variety of food and feed novel ingredient and claims innovations. Dr. van de Ligt also provided leadership to extended and interdisciplinary technical and regulatory teams to ensure ingredients met appropriate nutrition and safety standards through toxicological and nutritional efficacy evaluation. These development initiatives required collaboration with external researchers, interdisciplinary teams, industry trade associations, governmental officials, and private-sector customers and suppliers, as well as obtaining and coordinating project and research timeline, strategy, expectations, and work products.
Dr. van de Ligt developed an intellectual asset management program for a major division of the same global food company, which supported expansion of its global footprint with greater longevity, and the application of proprietary and profit-generating tools and technologies. Dr. van de Ligt has more than 130 global patents and patent applications, including for specialty ingredients, processing technology, packaging innovations, biology-based feed formulation systems, and animal virus mitigation strategies.