The 2024 AOAC INTERNATIONAL Annual Meeting & Exposition will be held from August 23 to 28, 2024, at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
The AOAC Annual Meeting & Exposition provides unparalleled professional development, networking, and collaboration in methods-based science.
This multi-faceted “idea incubator” focuses on regulatory changes and emerging food safety issues. A plenary and two breakout sessions feature thought-provoking ideas to identify and meet analytical needs—before public health emergencies arise.
Dr. Harold Schmitz, co-founder and General Partner in The March Group (TMG), and a Senior Scholar in the Graduate School of Management (GSM) at the University of California, Davis (UCD), will be the keynote speaker for the 2024 AOAC INTERNATIONAL Annual Meeting & Exposition from August 23 to 28 in Baltimore, MD. TMG is a technology focused venture capital fund dedicated to positively transforming human and planetary health, with exponential technology breakthroughs in AI and synthetic biology at the heart of these positive transformations. Schmitz will speak on “Analytical Science in the 21st Century: Embracing AI at the Center.”
In the global food sector, Schmitz has unique expertise working at the transformational technology – based innovation interface of industry, academia and government. His passion for multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral collaborations underpins his interactions with the Executive Committee of the National Academy of Sciences Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable since 2003. In a similar vein, during 2007-2018, Schmitz led the Mars partnership with the annual meetings of the Lindau Nobel Foundation that catalyzed partnership with the University of California Office of the President beginning in 2020.
Schmitz is Chair of the Industry Advisory Board for the AI Institute for Next-Generation Food Systems co-funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the National Science Foundation. In addition, he is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and currently serves as an advisor to the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s BioInnovation Institute and DTU Biosustain, the GSM Food and Agriculture Industry Advisory Committee, and the UCD Innovation Institute for Food and Health.
Schmitz has deep domain expertise in the global food industry gained from 25 years with Mars, Incorporated, including serving as the company’s Chief Science Officer, co-chair of its global science advisory council, and Executive Director of the Mars Advanced Research Institute based at UCD. During his tenure with Mars, Schmitz led the cocoa flavanols research program, including publication of the analytical sciences methods that eventually led to recognition by AOAC INTERNATIONAL in 2013 as the “Multi-Laboratory Study of the Year” regarding AOAC Official Method 2012.14 and chocolate, cocoa liquors, powders, and cocoa flavanol extracts.
Schmitz received his Ph.D. in Food Science with a minor in Organic Chemistry from North Carolina State University where he was a USDA National Needs Fellow.
