About Us
Bronwen Percival is the cheese buyer for Neal’s Yard Dairy in London. In addition to working with cheesemakers and the company’s maturation team to select and optimize the quality of the cheese they sell, she works to mobilize collaboration between cheesemakers and the scientific community. In 2012, she instigated a biennial conference on the Science of Artisan Cheese. In early 2014, she spent two months in the Dutton Lab at Harvard University studying the role of marine-associated Proteobacteria on cheese rinds. She is a convenor of the London Gastronomy Seminars, a member of the UK Specialist Cheesemakers’ Association Technical Committee, and sat on the editorial board of the Oxford Companion to Cheese. Her book, Reinventing the Wheel: Milk, Microbes, and the Fight for Real Cheese, co-authored with her husband Francis, will be published by University of California Press in September 2017.
Benjamin Wolfe is a microbiologist at Tufts University using the microbial communities of food to address fundamental questions in microbial ecology and evolution. He received his B.Sc. from Cornell University in 2003 and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2010. He began studying the microbiology of fermented foods as a post-doctoral fellow with Rachel Dutton at Harvard’s FAS Center for Systems Biology. He has worked on the science of fermentation with a number of chefs and food producers, including David Chang’s Momofuku Culinary Lab and Jasper Hill Farms. He has taught food microbiology courses at the Harvard Summer School and Boston University’s Gastronomy Program and frequently teaches classes or workshops on food microbes at Formaggio Kitchen, the San Francisco Cheese School, and for artisan food guilds across the country. Benjamin is a regular contributor to the food magazine Lucky Peach and writes an online series about the biology of food for Boston magazine.
Ben, we are already planning our Cultured Colorado 2016 after a really good start this year.
Our local Extension University is Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, an hour north. We are networking with them to expand their Fermentation Science program (mostly beer now) to include foods. We all know beer is food too! But we mean vegetables, cheese, dairy, grains, legumes and meats. Teas. Etc. It will take time, but we are tying industry to academics and it holds promise.
The University of Colorado, Boulder, was home to Rob Knight until recently. He has move his microbiome research to California, but many here are aware and interested in his work. Some research at CU continues. We want to cement those ties and I am working on developing that this next year.
I wondered if you might be interested in coming to Cultured Colorado 2016 and teaching some clinics to our audience? Beyond the academicians, we have lots of consumers, some commercial processors, lots of health care and nutrition professionals, Chefs, farmers, grocery stores and even some institutional foods interested and participating now. A slice of the local food system.
LMK your thoughts, your honoraria, travel and lodging accommodation, your wants and needs viz participation. A curricula vitae and lecture topics will help our Board in speaker selection.
Thanks!
Luther Green
Operations Manager
The Cultured Food Guild
[email protected]
http://www.culturedfoodguild.org
http://www.facebook.com/culturedfoodguild
303 494 1269