Leadership

As vice president of product research at Dairy Management Inc., Kapoor leads National Dairy Council research programs in important areas such as milk powders, whey and milk protein ingredients, and dairy co-products at major universities to drive dairy innovation and sales on behalf of America’s dairy farmers.

Kapoor also holds an adjunct professor appointment at the Dairy and Food Science Department, South Dakota State University, which is one of the nation’s premier universities in dairy research and education.

Kapoor has more than 18 years of dairy foods research and development experience in industry and academia combined. During his tenure, Kapoor worked at various leading dairy and food companies such as Nestlé USA, Bongards, and Kerry Americas where he provided research and development leadership toward cheese and dairy ingredient-focused innovation.

Kapoor received his BS in dairy technology from the National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal, India, and his MS and PhD in food science with an emphasis on dairy science and technology from the University of Minnesota.

David Everett is currently the strategy lead for foundational science at AgResearch, New Zealand, an agricultural and food research organization. He most recently was the director of the Dairy Innovation Institute and held the Leprino Foods Endowed Professorship in Dairy Food Science (2015–2018), both positions at California State University, San Luis Obispo. Everett is originally from Australia and completed his PhD in food science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has 34 years of experience in research and teaching at universities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the

United States, and at the CSIRO Division of Food Processing (Dairy Research Laboratories), an Australian federal government research center. His previous commercial research activities were at the dairy industry-funded Australian Food Ingredient Applications Centre in Melbourne as a science liaison manager to bring together publicly funded researchers and the dairy industry to generate new ideas. Everett is a principal investigator and fellow of the Riddet Institute National Centre of Research Excellence in New Zealand, and a fellow of the NZ Institute of Food Science and Technology, where he served as president and chairman of the board for two terms (2013–2015). He currently serves as an Editorial Board member of the International Dairy Journal, the Journal of Texture Studies, and is a section editor of the Elsevier Encyclopedia of Dairy Science. Everett is the immediate past chair of the Dairy Foods Division of the American Dairy Science Association (2019–2020) and has been a member of ADSA® for 27 years. He is currently an elected member of the Science and Program Coordination Committee of the International Dairy Federation.

Everett’s research program focuses on understanding the effect of food product microstructure on enzymatic reactions that produce flavor compounds; release of flavor compounds, nutrients, and bioactive components under in vitro oral and digestive conditions; colloidal and surface physical chemical reactions in dairy products; cheese science and technology; and dairy ingredient functionality. He has published over 150 research papers, conference abstracts, and book chapters.

Everett’s record of chairing a professional society board and initiating constitutional reform while ensuring fiscal responsibility, his industry connections in the United States and New Zealand, and his service to ADSA and other professional associations provides him with expertise and experience to serve on the ADSA board. He has a strong focus on good governance, leadership, and facilitating the free discussion of new ideas and approaches.

Everett currently lives in Palmerston North, New Zealand, with his wife and cat.

Selvarani (Rani) Govindasamy-Lucey is a distinguished scientist in the Center for Dairy Research (CDR) at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison. She is a native from Singapore, named as the Food Capital of the World for its incredible diversity of food. She received a BS in biochemistry (honors; 1989) and a PhD in food technology (1996) from the National University of Singapore. She did part of her PhD studies at Massey University (New Zealand) and worked as a food scientist at the New Zealand Crop and Food Institute and a postdoctoral scientist for three years at the New Zealand Dairy Research Institute. She joined the CDR in 1999 as a scientist and over the past 22 years has been actively involved in a wide range of cheese research topics both for dairy companies as well as graduate student projects. She has successfully obtained over $3M in grants during this time. She was awarded the CALS academic staff award for Excellence in Research (2017) and named a Distinguished Scientist (2020) by UW-Madison.

Govindasamy-Lucey chaired the organizing committee for the International Dairy Federation Cheese Ripening and Technology conference that was held in Madison in 2012 (the first time this prestigious research meeting was held in the United States). She has been an invited examiner of grants and graduate theses for students from Canada, Norway, Germany, and Ireland. Her research areas have included use of membrane filtration to improve cheese yield and productivity, and several of her studies were cited by the Food and Drug Administration in permitting the use of ultrafiltration for standardized cheeses. She has also explored the use of various techniques like new cheesemaking technologies, high pressure processing, and ultra-low temperature storage (but above freezing) on extending cheese shelf-life. These studies have assisted US manufacturers to successfully export cheeses to distant overseas markets. After the pandemic caused the shutdown of most food service markets for cheese, she organized a webinar discussing various alternative options for cheesemakers, COVID-19 Toolkit for Cheesemakers, which had over 500 attendees. She coordinates several cheesemaking short courses for the dairy industry and oversees the research, analytical, and sensory programs within the CDR.

She strongly believes in giving back to the dairy community. She has been a member of ADSA for more than 20 years and has served in various capacities including chair of the Dairy Foods Division Council (2020–2021) and chair of Graduate Student Oral competition (2018), and is currently vice chair of ADSA Overall Program Committee for the annual meeting in 2022 and a member of Nominating Committee (2019–2020, 2020–2021). She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Dairy Science as well as several other dairy foods journals.

Throughout her 22 years at UW-Madison, Govindasamy-Lucey has had the opportunity to practice the Wisconsin Idea, that education should influence people’s lives beyond the boundaries of the classroom at the university. The CDR model forges a partnership between university research activities and the US dairy industry. This partnership works by connecting basic and applied research to various issues the cheese and dairy industries face. She was able to bridge the gap between fundamental basic research and its application through writing grant proposals addressing specific issues, troubleshooting assistance through analytical protocols, and disseminating information through short courses and research manuscripts. She is fortunate to be able to play a key role in mentoring the graduate students with their dairy-related projects. Mentoring and training graduate students is vitally important to the dairy industry because there is a shortage of well-trained scientists in the dairy industry today. UW-Madison has had a dairy school since 1890. She is so proud to be part of this tradition.

Xin Zhao is a lactation physiologist. His career to date has been a journey characterized by diverse educational and professional experiences obtained in different countries. Zhao received his BSc and MSc in animal science in 1982 and 1985, respectively, from Nanjing Agricultural University, China. He was awarded his PhD in animal science from Cornell University in 1989. After completing his PhD studies, he moved to Canada for postdoctoral studies, first at the University of Guelph and then at the University of Toronto. Zhao was hired as an assistant professor in McGill University’s Department of Animal Science in 1993, was promoted to full professor in 2006, and has held a James McGill Professorship since 2007.

Dairy production plays an important role in world agriculture and human nutrition and is expected to continue to do so in the future. World milk production is increasing, especially in developing countries. At the same time, concerns over animal welfare, the environmental impact of animal production, and food safety issues are increasing and need to be addressed. Zhao works in the field of mammary gland biology, where his studies have focused on bovine mammary functions during normal and pathological states. He continues to lead a group that has adopted a multidisciplinary approach to studying lactation physiology, complex host–pathogen interactions during mastitis, and antibiotic resistance in bacteria from mastitic milk. The overarching goal of Zhao’s research program has been to significantly advance current knowledge in those three areas in order to sustain dairy production, reduce costs associated with mastitis, and mitigate the impact of antibiotic resistance on animal and human health.

Zhao has taught undergraduate courses in physiology and in biochemistry. He has trained 29 MSc students, 26 PhD students, and 18 postdoctoral fellows who are now working all over the world. Many of them have become distinguished educators, researchers, and industry leaders. The results of his research have been published in 225 journal articles, 6 book chapters, and more than 94 abstracts for scientific conferences.

Zhao has received several awards and honors. At McGill University, he held a William Dawson Scholarship between 2002 and 2007 and was appointed as a James McGill Professor in 2007 for a 7-year term and again in 2014. He received the Canadian Society of Animal Science’s Award for Technical Innovation in Enhancing Production of Safe Affordable Food in 2006 and the Canadian Society of Animal Science Fellowship Award in 2011. Zhao was the recipient of the ADSA West Agro Inc. Award in 2016.

Zhao was the chair of the Department of Animal Science at McGill University between 1999 and 2007. He served as chair of the Animal Science Review Panel for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and as a member on Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s science advisory board. He has been a member of the Dairy Cattle Genetics and Research (DairyGen) Council of Canadian Dairy Network’s Research Committee since 2008. Zhao has been an active member of ADSA since 1990. He has served on the ADSA West Agro Award Committee since 2017 and is frequently called upon as a reviewer for the Journal of Dairy Science. Zhao is also a member of several other professional societies, including the American Society of Microbiology, Poultry Science Association, and Canadian Society of Animal Science.

Laura Hernandez grew up in El Paso, Texas, and always had a keen interest in animal physiology. She was a collegiate swimmer and swam at Iowa State University for three years, then transferred to New Mexico State University. She received her BS and MS degrees in animal science from New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. She did her PhD at the University of Arizona in nutritional biochemistry. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular physiology at the University of Cincinnati Medical School. She joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2011.

Hernandez’s main research focus is on the regulation of mammary gland function and maternal homeostasis during lactation. Specifically, she is interested in the role of serotonin on coordinating calcium dynamics in the mammary gland and how this relates to maternal calcium homoestasis during the early peripartum period.

She is also interested in the other physiological functions serotonin regulates within the mammary gland (i.e., glucose metabolism, fat metabolism, and so on) and how that pertains to maternal physiology during lactation as well as the formation of milk. She has authored 69 peer-reviewed publications, given 66 invited presentations in the United States and several countries, and has two patents for her research. She has trained four PhD students and three MS students. She was the winner of the 2017 American Dairy Science Association® Foundation Scholar in Production award and has been a section editor for the Journal of Dairy Science® in the physiology section since 2019. She also was on the Lactation Biology Section Committee from 2013–2016 for the ADSA Annual Meeting.

Hernandez’s goals as a professor have been to work on novel areas of lactation physiology and to mentor graduate students in this field who go on to work in academia and the dairy industry. Understanding how the mammary gland controls lactation is critical to cow health, and this has been the focus of her research program. She believes that our association should continue to have a vibrant research portfolio that encourages young scientists to join ADSA and also attend the annual meeting. Further, she says that research in the field of dairy science should continue to be cutting edge and provide in-depth understanding of both dairy cow production and dairy food production. She believes it is critical to continue to recognize novel areas of research that are critical to dairy production and dairy foods and to integrate them into the program. She feels this is important for our industry and also for our journal. Hernandez thinks we must continue to support a community that views our journal portfolio as a first choice for publication of the original research in the field of dairy science produced by our membership and others. She says it is also critical that ADSA continues to maintain great relationships with all our industry partners that are supportive of the society and the research that is produced by our members. These priorities are critical for maintenance of a diverse membership and commitment to the dairy industry, according to Hernandez.

Stephen LeBlanc is a professor in the Department of Population Medicine at the University of Guelph and director of Dairy at Guelph – The Centre for Dairy Research and Innovation. He received a BSc(Agr) in Animal Science from McGill University in 1992, and a DVM (in 1997) and DVSc (in 2001) from the University of Guelph. After five years of private dairy veterinary practice, he joined the faculty at the University of Guelph, where he teaches veterinary and agriculture students, provides clinical farm service, and leads a dairy research program.

His research focuses on dairy cow metabolic and reproductive health and management, precision technologies, and antimicrobial stewardship. With graduate students and collaborators, this work has resulted in over 165 peer-reviewed papers. He joined the JDS Club 100 in 2019, with over 100 papers published in our journal. He has given invited talks in 20 countries and received the ADSA Zoetis award for physiology in 2019.

Stephen is active in service to dairy societies. He is a past president of the Dairy Cattle Reproduction Council and recently concluded six years as a section and senior editor for the Journal of Dairy Science. He chaired the ADSA Annual Meeting Reproduction Committee and serves on the Discover Conferences Steering Committee. He has been a member of the organizing committee for two Discover Conferences (21: Reproduction, and 31: Big Data) and co-chaired Discover 39 on Transition Cows in 2020.

He is keen to see ADSA sustain and continue the progress of its flagship journals and annual meeting and to build its position as a leader in bringing together dairy researchers and research users. He is motivated to see ADSA continue to evolve with creativity, dynamism, transparency, openness, and rigor.

Rich Erdman was born and raised on a dairy farm near Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. He attended the University of Wisconsin– River Falls and obtained a BS in animal science in 1974. After a brief period farming with his parents, he went on to graduate school at the University of Kentucky, where he received his MS and PhD degrees in 1977 and 1979, respectively. He joined the Dairy Science Department at the University of Maryland in 1979 and just recently retired as a professor in the Animal and Avian Sciences Department. Erdman served as chair of the Department of Animal and Avian Sciences from 1999 to 2007, where he provided administrative leadership to a department consisting of 22 faculty, 28 staff members, 240 undergraduate students, and 40 graduate students. During that time, the department’s undergraduate enrollment increased by 30%, research funding more than doubled, and nine new faculty members were hired.

Erdman taught undergraduate courses in applied animal nutrition and dairy cattle management. He has served as the academic advisor for more than 30 PhD and MS students who are now employed in academia, government, and industry. Erdman’s research focus has been on nutrition of the lactating dairy cow in the areas of energy metabolism and the influence of diet on milk composition, particularly milk fat secretion. The results of his research have been published in 99 journal articles, 146 abstracts, and 55 conference proceedings and popular press articles, and he holds two US patents. Erdman has been a frequent invited speaker at regional, national, and international dairy nutrition and management meetings, where he has given more than 100 invited research and extension presentations. Erdman was a member of the National Research Council (NRC) subcommittee that wrote the seventh revised edition of Nutrient Requirements of Dairy Cattle, published in 2001 by the National Academy of Sciences. He currently serves as chair of the NRC subcommittee that is writing the eighth revised edition of the Dairy NRC. He received the Northeast ADSA-ASAS Young Scientist Award in 1990, the ADSA American Feed Industries Dairy Nutrition Research Award in 1996, and the Dean Gordon Cairns Award for Distinguished Creative Work and Teaching in Agriculture from the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland in 2006.

Erdman has been a member of ADSA throughout his career and served on the ADSA board of directors from 2010 to 2013 and as Production Division chair in 1993. He has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Dairy Science and numerous committees for ADSA. He chaired the Host Institution Coordinating Committee for the 88th ADSA Annual Meeting, held at the University of Maryland in 1993. In 2008, he served as president of the joint Northeast Section of ADSA and the American Society of Animal Science. Erdman has been a member of the American Registry of Professional Animal Scientists since 1987 and has served two terms on the Washington DC Area Chapter board of directors. Erdman and his wife live in Ellicott City, Maryland.