Danièle Sohier joined Hygiena in 2024 to coordinate global scientific affairs and market development.
Prior to her role at Hygiena, Danièle spent 16 years at ADRIA Institute in France to develop services in molecular microbiology. She took the lead of the business unit on food safety in 2003. ADRIA became the most important expert laboratory running ISO 16140 validation studies of rapid methods in Europe. In 2016, she joined Bruker in Germany to coordinate the development in industrial microbiology. She conducted the first harmonized ISO 16140-part 6/AOAC-OMA validation studies, receiving two AOAC awards: Award Method of the Year in 2018 and Award of the Publication of the Year in 2019. Most recently, with Thermo Fisher Scientific, she was responsible for global food certification strategies for new product initiatives and for coordinating the interactions with governing bodies.
Danièle has been very active in standardization and method certification bodies. After 4 years of service on the board of AOAC INTERNATIONAL, she was elected President. She started her Presidency at the 2024 AOAC annual meeting. She is the co-chair of the Expert Review Panel for the validation of AOAC Official Methods of Analysis in food microbiology. She is a member of MicroVal and AFNOR committees for the ISO 16140 validation of proprietary methods and was a member of the AOAC Official Method Board for a while.
She has led the development of standards, particularly in the ISO 16140 series on method validation in food microbiology, or the development of AOAC SMPRs®. She is particularly involved in the development or revision of the ISO 16140-part 1, -part 2, part 6 and part 7 standards for the validation of proprietary methods. She led the development of the AOAC-SMPR on molecular applications for food authenticity and was granted the award for Technical & Scientific Excellence for the conducted work, and more recently with the Fellow Award of AOAC INTERNATIONAL.
