Francisco Diez-Gonzalez is the Director of the Center for Food Safety and Professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology at the University of Georgia. Dr. Diez graduated with a BS in Food Science, from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Mexico. He earned his MS and PhD in Food Science from Cornell University. In 1999, he joined the Department of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Minnesota as Assistant Professor in Food Safety Microbiology. He was promoted to Associate and full Professor, and he served as Department Head from 2014 to 2016. He is an editor for mBio and serves in the editorial board of Journal of Food Protection, Microbiology Spectrum, and Food Protection Trends. He was a member of a National Research Council’s Committee on risk ranking and the USDA’s National Advisory Committee for Microbiological Criteria in Foods. In 2022, he was part of the Reagan-Udall Foundation’s Independent Expert Panel that conducted an overall review of the FDA. He serves in the CDC’s Board of Scientific Counselors' FSMA Surveillance Working Group and the GFSI Science and Technology Advisory Group. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the International Association for Food Protection. He directs research on ecology, control, and detection of foodborne bacteria in different food commodities.