Dr. van de Ligt is the founder of Food Edge Solutions that provides nutrition and regulatory solutions for the food and feed industries. She has an extensive background in animal feed and human food nutrition modeling, defense, and regulations, with academic, industry, and global perspectives. Her professional experience spans areas such as developing food defense plans for food manufacturing facilities, development of novel food and feed ingredients, and developing compliant consumer- packaged goods labeling for global product launches. A key focus of her current work is building collaborations with and transitioning food and feed security, defense, and supply-chain resiliency solutions to the food industry. Most recently, Dr. van de Ligt was the Senior Advisor for Intentional Adulteration with the Food and Drug Administration where she provided expertise on national security and counterterrorism related to the food and agriculture critical infrastructure. 

Previously, Dr. van de Ligt was a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Minnesota and director of the Food Protection and Defense Institute, an emeritus Homeland Security Center of Excellence. She also a held numerous leadership positions at a global food, agricultural, financial, and industrial products company operating in 70 countries. Dr. van de Ligt has more than 130 global patents and patent applications, including for specialty ingredients, processing technology, packaging innovations, and biology-based dynamic modeling formulation systems.

Expertise

• Food Defense
• Vulnerability Assessments
• Mitigation Strategies
• Regulatory Affairs
• Biological Modeling
• Supply Chain Resilience
• Nutrition

Education

Ph.D. Animal Nutrition
University of Kentucky

M.S. Animal Nutrition
University of Illinois

B.S. Animal Science
North Carolina State University