Third Capacity Building Workshop on Food Safety Assessment of Genetically Engineered Plants

Day 2

August 21, 2025 | 9:30 am - 5:00 pm

Day 3

August 22, 2025 | 9:00 am - 2:00 pm

Bhavneet Bajaj, Ph.D., PMP

Senior Manager, Agriculture & Food Systems Institute (AFSI), USA

Dr. Bhavneet Bajaj joined the Agriculture & Food Systems Institute (AFSI) in July 2018 as Scientific Program Manager. She has been involved in projects related to safety assessment of foods and feeds derived from genetically engineered plants and serves as a resource person in providing technical support for capacity building programs in biotechnology. She was also the program lead for USDA-funded technical training for Chinese and Indonesian regulators and manages operations for both the Crop Composition Database and the World Nutrient Databases for Dietary Studies.

Prior to joining AFSI, Dr. Bajaj was a Visiting Scientist at the Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory, Agricultural Research Service, USDA, where she worked on carotenoid pathway regulation in tomatoes. Before then, she was Associate Investigator with the Plant Protection group at (then) DuPont, where she devised a metabolic engineering strategy for insect control in soybean. While in India, she was an Assistant Professor at Jaipur National University, where she taught genetic engineering, enzymology, and biochemistry courses to M.Sc. level students. Her research work over the past 12 years involved plant secondary metabolites of nutri­tional, agricultural, and medicinal importance.

Flerida A. Cariño, Ph.D.

Consultant, Philippines Food and Drug Administration and Former Professor of Biochemistry, University of the Philippines – Diliman

Dr. Flerida Cariño retired in April 2019 as a full professor of biochemistry from the University of the Philippines, Diliman. At the university, she was the former director of two institutes–the Institute of Chemistry and the Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology. She holds a Ph.D. in Insecticide Toxicology from Texas A&M University and has worked extensively with insecticide resistance genetics, biochemistry, and molecular biology.

Dr. Cariño served as a physical scientist member of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) Biosafety Committee from 2010-2022.  She has been involved in drafting policy and regulations for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) since 1994. She has served as faculty in several local and international training programmes on food safety and environmental risk assessment for several international organizations involved in biosafety capacity building and for various Philippine government institutions involved in the regulation of GMOs. She was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) from 2011-2017 and has actively represented the Philippine position in the Convention on Biological Diversity and meetings of parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety of Living Modified Organisms. She is presently part of the Department of Health’s COVID Laboratory Expert Panel and is a consultant to the Philippines’ Food and Drug Administration, providing guidance on urban pesticides and risk assessments of GMOs and their products.

Dinesh Kumar, Ph.D.

Principal Scientist (Biotechnology), Bioinformatics Division, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute (IASRI), India

Prof. Dr. Dinesh Kumar is a Principal Scientist in the Bioinformatics Division at the  Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute (IASRI) in New Delhi, a position he has held since 2012. He previously served as Professor, Dean of Academic Affairs, and Director of the Office of International Affairs at the Central University of Haryana (2021–2023), and as Senior Scientist at the ICAR–National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources (NBAGR), Karnal (1997–2012). He holds undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral degrees in biotechnology from Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, and earned his Ph.D. in 1997. Dr. Kumar also holds law degrees (LL.B. and LL.M.) from Kurukshetra University, a postgraduate diploma in technology management from the University of Hyderabad (where he was awarded a Gold Medal), and a diploma in intellectual property rights from IGNOU, New Delhi. He completed post-doctoral fellowships at Iowa State University, USA, in 2003–2004 and 2007–2008.

Dr. Kumar currently chairs the GMO and Foods Scientific Panel of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. He has served as a member of the DST/SERB Task Force in plant sciences (2020–2023). With over 100 research publications in high-impact journals and more than 50 patents and copyrights, his notable scientific contributions include the world’s first cow genome sequencing (Science, 2009), discovery of the dwarfism gene in U.S. beef cattle (PNAS, 2009), and development of the world’s first DNA signature server for plant varieties (Scientific Reports, 2019). He is also known for his work on wheat microbiomes and bioethanol production. In addition to his research, Dr. Kumar is a motivational speaker, provides free career counseling to students, offers legal support to academic victims, and is actively involved with orphanage initiatives.

Alka Rao, Ph.D.

Advisor–Science, Standards & Regulations, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), India

Prof. Dr. Alka Rao is a distinguished protein engineer and molecular microbiologist with over 15 years of research experience. She currently leads the Science & Standards & Regulations divisions at the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), where she collaborates with more than 250 experts to develop food safety standards, guidance documents, codes of practice, and regulatory frameworks. Dr. Rao also serves as the liaison officer with the Codex Alimentarius Commission and the Enquiry Point for the WTO-SPS Committee.

Her scientific contributions include the discovery of rare bacterial enzymes and the successful launch of a microbial agricultural product. She has led 22 research and development projects, published over 50 international papers, and secured seven granted patents out of more than 15 filed. Her societal impact was recently featured in a Nature (UK) “Career Feature” in February 2024.

Dr. Rao is an active member of the global scientific community, serving as an Associate Editor for Chemical Papers, a member of the Editorial Board of Scientific Reports, and part of the Executive Council of the Proteomics Society of India. She has contributed her expertise to numerous government bodies, including the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, the Ministry of Education, the Department of Biotechnology, and the National GLP Compliance Monitoring Authority.

She played a pivotal role in amending India’s Biological Diversity Act of 2002 and in shaping national positions on digital sequence information and access and benefit sharing. As Chairperson of FSSAI’s Scientific Panel on Food Additives, she was instrumental in aligning Indian standards with global norms.

Dr. Rao’s outreach work includes advocacy for the “Eat Right India” campaign within the deaf community and contributions to CSIR and DST public engagement initiatives. She has received over 15 awards and fellowships, including the Zero Project Award 2024 and recognition from the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP). In 2023, she was honored as one of the “Women Scientist Achievers” in CSIR laboratories.

Andrew Roberts, Ph.D.

Chief Executive Officer, Agriculture and Food Systems Institute (AFSI), USA

Dr. Andrew Roberts joined the Agriculture and Food Systems Institute (AFSI) in December 2009 as the Deputy Director of the Center for Environmental Risk Assessment (CERA), where he developed tools and materials for use in training and capacity building related to the problem formulation approach to environmental risk assessment and served as the coordinator for CERA’s capacity building projects under the USAID-funded South Asia Biosafety Program (SABP) and the World Bank-funded Partnership for Biosafety Risk Assessment and Regulation, in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam. He also provided technical support for capacity building work in Brazil, India, Japan, Chile, and South Africa. In January 2015, he became the director of CERA, as well as the Center for Safety Assessment of Food and Feed (CSAFF), which worked on food and feed safety assessment for foods derived from genetically engineered plants. The two centers were later consoli­dated under the Research Foundation, for which he became Deputy Executive Director in January 2017. When the organization became the Agriculture and Food Systems Institute in 2020, his title shifted to Vice President – Biotechnology, and he assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer later that year.

Prior to joining AFSI, Dr. Roberts worked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in several different capacities, all related to the regulation of agricultural biotechnology. He began his career at USDA as an AAAS Risk Policy Fellow in the Office of Science of Biotechnology Regulatory Services (BRS), the group responsible for regulating genetically engineered plants at USDA’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service. After spending a year in the New Technologies office of the Foreign Agricultural Service serving as the lead for USDA’s efforts related to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, he returned to BRS to serve in the International Affairs branch where he remained until joining AFSI.