Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Piacenza, Italy
Pier Sandro Cocconcelli, is Full Professor of Food Microbiology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and he is Rector’s delegate for internationalization of the same university. He is director of TROFIC ( the Transdisciplinary Research on Food Issues Center) of the Università Cattolica.
In 1987 he has worked at the Institute of Food Research of Reading (UK) on the development of cloning vectors for lactic acid bacteria and in 1994 he was visiting Assistant Professor at the BTPI of the University of Minnesota (USA).
Since 2003, he is scientific expert of the European Authority of Food Safety (EFSA) as Panel and Working Group member focusing on the microbiological risk assessment. From 2006 to 2010 he has chaired the Standing Working Group on Microorganisms of FEEDAP and now he chairs the Standing Working Group of Genetically Modified Microorganisms. He is also member of the BIOHAZARD Working Group on Qualified Presumption of Safety of Microorganisms.
His research activities are focused on food and agricultural microbiology, bacterial molecular biology, bacterial genomics, risk analysis of food pathogenic bacteria, and on the gene exchange of antibiotic resistance and virulence determinants in the food chain.
He has been teaching food microbiology and molecular biology over the last 15 years. In the last five years he has coordinated specific programmes, PhD school and executive courses, on the microbiological risk assessment in the food chain.