Food Protection Trends - November/December 2021 - 653

PDG HIGHLIGHT
Microbial Modelling and Risk Analysis (MMRA)
Professional Development Group
The mission of the Microbial Modelling and Risk Analysis
(MMRA) Professional Development Group (PDG)
is to facilitate communication specifically on the topics of
predictive modelling (PM) and quantitative microbial risk
assessment (QMRA). It further encourages research and
data reporting methods to support PM and MRA and promote
their applications and use.
Our PDG counts almost 500 members and continues to
grow every year in number and diversity of members across
the world. A multi-actor involvement is ensured by representatives
from the food industry, academia, and government,
who meet physically (or virtually) every year at the PDG
meeting prior to the IAFP Annual Meeting and exchange
knowledge, establish collaboration opportunities, and
formulate ideas for symposia, roundtables and workshops
for the next Annual Meeting and European symposium.
Every year, 8-10 symposia and roundtables are sponsored by
MMRA PDG and attract a considerable audience. Of note is
also the 1-2 webinars in relevant topics throughout the year.
Preparation of proposals can be further facilitated through
the interactive PDG community page in IAFP Connect,
where members can also access past meeting minutes and
informative material shared at the annual PDG meetings,
including the presentations of invited speakers.
The high expertise of our PDG members offers a continuous
update of the MMRA community with the state-of-the
art in a rapidly changing world. The fields of PM and QMRA
are gaining a lot of attention worldwide and support riskbased
decisions about food safety problems, development of
safe product formulation and source attribution. The advances
in data analytics and computational biology, including big
data handling and machine learning, as well as the increasingly
new insights in-omics era have markedly contributed
to the establishment of perspectives for integrating -omics
in QMRA. The user-friendly software tools, explicitly
demonstrated in 2 symposia (2017 and 2019), has paved the
way for more routine use of predictive modeling principles
by the industry and the authorities (e.g., assessing product
compliance and shelf life). The above topics constitute a
unique repository of ideas that can be distilled into webinars,
symposia, and roundtables. To motivate students, our PDG
has also established 2 student awards for the top MMRA
abstracts, via a diligent selection process, by a 3- to 5-member
judging committee, that are presented at the annual PDG
meeting, along with a flash presentation by the recipients,
on site.
We invite you to join our PDG and liaise with other PDGs
for acquiring spherical knowledge of food safety approaches.
If you would like to learn more, or are interested to be added
on our list, please do not hesitate to contact MMRA PDG
Chair Panos Skandamis (pskan@aua.gr) or Vice Chair Sofia
Santillana-Farakos (Sofia.SantillanaFarakos@fda.hhs.gov).
Panagiotis N. Skandamis, Chairperson
November/December Food Protection Trends 653
https://www.foodprotection.org/files/food-protection-trends/nov-dec-21-pdg.pdf
Food Protection Trends - November/December 2021

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