Born in Belgium, Doctor in Veterinary Medicine and post-graduated in Inspection of Foods of Animal Origin and Physiopathology of Animal Reproduction, Maurizio Ferri has more than 23 years of professional experience in the field of Veterinary Public Health and Food Safety. Since 1991 to date, he is employed as Veterinary Officer at Italian Veterinary Service, Health Unit of Pescara, with duties related to official controls, inspection and audit at red meat establishments, management of internal quality system and professional training, developing standard operating procedures and related manuals on food inspection, risk categorizaation of food producing plants and implementation of food microbiological criteria. He was selected as Italian food safety expert for assisting the ex Food and Veterinary Office (FVO). He performed assessment missions and delivered EU TAIEX training in food safety, and veterinary public health for the implementation of the acquis communautaire in the EU acceding countries. He has gained broad experience in evaluating food safety microbiological risk and assessing SPS-Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures. He received training on quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) at University of Maryland (USA). He lectured at Risk Analysis Annual meeting in Baltimore (USA) (2009) and Risk analysis European meeting in London (2010). He also contributed to several EFSA Scientific Colloquium Reports on: Risk assessment of food producing animals (2005); Risk-benefit analysis of food: method and approaches, (2006); Assessing health benefits of controlling Campylobacter in the food chain, (2008); Emerging Risks in Food-From Identification to Communication (2011). The latest one on Epigenetics and Risk Assessment (EFSA, 2016) and the Use of Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) of food-borne pathogens for public health protection (FAO, WHO, 2016). He is currently: - in the reserve list of the European Commission for competition EPSO/A/18/04 Administrators (A7/A6), FVO-Audit-evaluation and control - Scientific Coordinator of the Italian Society of Preventive Veterinary Medicine (SIMeVeP) - Vice-President of UEVH (European Union Veterinary Hygienists) - Referee of Eurofishmarket magazine - Member of the Food Safety&Quality WG of the Federation of European Veterinarians (FVE) - Expert member of the Italian Ministry of Health’s Nutrition and Animal HealthTechnical Committee - Member of the GMI (Global microbial identifier), Work group 1: Political challenges, outreach and building a global network- - Referee of the Referee of magazine “Eurofishmarket“. - member of the EFSA Discussion Group on Emerging Risks (StaDG-ER) His new research area focuses on use of data mining, network analysis tools for food safety and political and regulatory environment for sharing food pathogens genome sequences via a global database.