Nigel Cook
The Food and Environment Research AgencyYork United Kingdom
Biographical Sketch: Nigel Cook is a graduate of the University of Dundee. After postdoctoral research in the Universities of Aberdeen and Leicester he moved to the Central Science Laboratory (now the Food and Environment Research Agency [FERA]) at the Food Science Laboratory, Torry, Aberdeen in September 1994, before relocating to new facilities in York. At FERA, he studies the transmission of pathogens, particularly enteric viruses, through foods and the environment. He has a Visiting Professorship at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. He is Councillor of the International Association for Food and Environmental Virology. He is a project leader within the standardisation working group ISO TC34 SC9 WG6, currently developing a standard for detection of Cryptosporidium and Giardia on berry fruits and leafy green vegetables. He was Coordinator of the European Framework 7 project “Integrated monitoring and control of foodborne viruses in European food supply chains (VITAL)”, and Chair of COST Action 929 “A European Network for Environmental and Food Virology” from 2006 to 2010. Between 2009 and 2014, he was a member of various European Food Safety Authority's Working Groups preparing opinions on the risk of foodborne viruses, and represented the European Communities on the Codex Committee on Food Hygiene Working Group developing Guidelines on the Application of General Principles of Food Hygiene to the Control of Viruses in Food. He was a member of the UK Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food's Viral Infections Subgroup. He was the founding Editor of the journal “Food and Environmental Virology”, published by Springer Publishing Company.
