Debabrata Biswas is an Associate Professor of Food Safety in the Department of Animal Sciences (ANSC) and Center for Food Safety and Security Systems (CFS3) at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA. As a food safety specialist, he has committed to develop crosscutting research programs in the food safety area. He serves as editorial board member or reviewer for more than 40 journals and has published more than 70 peer review manuscripts and contributed book chapters for 12 published books. He has also mentored and trained many graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and younger scientists and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses related to food safety and gut microbiomes. He has delivered more than 40 invited talks and organized 4 international symposia in the area of food safety. Shirley A. Micallef is an Associate Professor in the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture (PSLA) and CFS3 at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA. She conducts research related to specialty crops, with emphasis on the microbial ecology of the crop agricultural environment, environmental reservoirs of enteric pathogens, impact of cropping practices on enteric pathogen dispersal and survival, microbiomes of fruit and vegetables, and Salmonella interactions with plants. She has been awarded several federal and state-supported grants for her innovative research in fruit and vegetable food safety, has published over 40 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, and has organized symposia and delivered several talks on human pathogen-plant interactions. She currently sits on the Editorial Board of Applied and Environmental Microbiology and Journal of Food Protection. She also teaches courses related to food safety and agricultural microbiology at the University of Maryland.