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PRESENTER BIOS (Continued)
EFSTATHIA PAPAFRAGKOU, FDA
PRESENTER: Challenges to Testing for Food-bourne Viruses in Food Samples
Dr. Efstathia (Efi) Papafragkou earned her Ph.D in 2007 in Food Microbiology from North Carolina State
University. Her thesis focused on the persistence, transfer and detection of human enteric viruses in
foods. Dr. Papafragkou was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship from the American Society of
Microbiology and joined the National Calicivirus Laboratory at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. As a post-doctoral research associate at CDC, she completed her training and specialized on
the application of cell culture techniques for cultivation of foodborne viruses. In 2010 she became a
member of the Molecular Virology Team at the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the Food
and Drug Administration. Her research interests include method development for sample preparation,
molecular detection, characterization and cell culture for quantifying foodborne pathogenic viruses from
food, clinical and environmental samples. She is also involved in method validation studies, and
teaching/training courses. Since joining FDA she continues to communicate her research through
publications, participation in professional conferences, and presentation in scientific meetings and
workshops.
FABIENNE LOISY-HARMON, ceeram
PRESENTER: ISO Technical Specifications of Viruses: How are they Relevant to Service Laboratories and
Assay Manufacturers?
Fabienne Loisy-Hamon has a PhD in microbiology with a specialty in molecular virology. She has been
studying human enteric viruses in environment and food samples since 12 years, developing molecular
methods for the detection of these viruses and studying their persistence in different types of
environment. From 2005 to 2014, she was, with Benoît Lebeau, the co-founder and CSO of ceeram, a
company specialized in molecular identification of microbial agents. She is now bioMérieux food
business- R&D virology manager. She is an expert member for the European Committee of
Normalization, for Afnor and also Afssa in working groups concerning food borne viruses and molecular
detection of food and feed pathogens. She has been publishing several papers and giving several oral
communication in international conferences concerning viruses subject. Her expertise is so worldwide
recognized. In July 2013, ceeram was the recipient of the “Food Safety Innovation Award” for its
expertise in food borne viruses.