Mindy Brashears is a Professor of Food Safety and Public Health and holds the Roth and Letch family Endowed Chair of Food Safety and serves as the Director of the International Center for Food Industry Excellence at Texas Tech University. She is the former Under Secretary of Agriculture in Food Safety where she served the USDA from 2019-2021. She is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors having 3 companies based on her research. Her research focuses on mitigation strategies in pre-and post-harvest environments and on the emergence of antimicrobial drug resistance. Her interests are primarily in meat, poultry and vegetable products. Her work has resulted in the commercialization of pre-harvest feed additives that reduce E. coli and Salmonella in cattle and she has 27 patents/patents pending. She teaches courses in food microbiology and food safety and offers industry training in food sanitation, recalls and food security.