Staff Update

SAREP Associate Director on NAS Committee

SAREP associate director Janet C. “Jenny” Broome has been selected to serve on a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) committee evaluating the quality, relevance and effectiveness of federally funded agricultural research. Committee members will focus on the United States Department of Agriculture’s research agencies within the Research, Education, and Economics mission (REE) area.

REE agencies provide research, education and extension services that address nutrition, food safety, quality, and quantity; the relationship between agriculture, natural resources, and the environment; and profitability of the domestic agricultural enterprise including quality of life through economic and social opportunities.

Broome will serve on the “environmental quality and harmonization of natural and agricultural resources” subcommittee of the Opportunities in Agriculture committee. Other subcommittees are food and fiber supply, food safety, diet and nutrition; and economic and social development in a global context. These subcommittees and a synthesis committee that includes UC Davis vice provost William Lacy, former SAREP interim director Robert Reginato, and UCD animal science professor Ransom Baldwin, Jr., will submit a report in 2002.

Other UCD representatives serving on the economic and social development subcommittee include Julian Alston, agricultural and resource economics professor, and Christine Bruhn, UC Cooperative Extension consumer food marketing specialist.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) was established in 1863 under a charter granted by the U.S. Congress that requires that “the Academy shall, whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art.” During the more than 125 years since the enactment of this charter, the NAS has become the most prestigious scientific honorary society in the United States and the federal government’s most important independent advisor in scientific and technical matters.

W.R. “Reg” Gomes, UC vice president-agriculture and natural resources, serves on the NAS Board of Agriculture and Natural Resources, which is responsible for providing advice on issues of agricultural production and related matters of natural resource development, including forestry, fisheries, wildlife, and land and water use. The Board oversees the work of its committees, including Opportunities in Agriculture. Other UC representatives on the BANR Board include Robert Fridley, emeritus professor at UC Davis and Brian Staskawicz, professor of plant biology at UC Berkeley.

Broome previously provided expert testimony in 1999 at a public workshop on a NAS study on the future role of pesticides. At SAREP she has worked extensively with the Biologically Integrated Farming Systems projects and the alternatives to methyl bromide grant program. She has a Ph.D. and a M.S. in plant pathology from UC Davis, and an undergraduate degree in biology from Swarthmore College.