Rodney Dietert is Professor of Immunotoxicology at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA and author of the 2016 book: The Human Superorganism: How the Microbiome Is Revolutionizing
the Pursuit of a Healthy Life from Dutton Penguin Random House. Rodney is in his 40 th year Cornell University faculty. He received his Ph.D. in immunogenetics from the University of Texas at Austin in 1977. Rodney has more than 300 publications, including 200 papers and bookchapters, with most concerning environmental risk factors, developmental immunotoxicity, and
programming of later-life, non-communicable diseases. Recently, he has focused on the importance of the microbiome in health and safety. Among his prior authored and edited books
are: Strategies for Protecting Your Child's Immune System (World Scientific Publishing, 2010),
Immunotoxicity Testing (Springer, 2010), Immunotoxicity, Immune Dysfunction, and Chronic Disease (Springer, 2012) and Science Sifting: Tools for Innovation in Science and Technology
(World Scientific, 2013). Rodney previously directed Cornell's Graduate Program in Immunology, the Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors and the Institute for
Comparative and Environmental Toxicology and served as a Senior Fellow in the Cornell Center for the Environment. Outside Cornell, he was President of the Immunotoxicology Specialty
Section (SOT) and Editor of Springer’s toxicology book series, Molecular and Integrative Toxicology. Recently, Rodney appeared in the 2014 award-winning documentary film on the
microbiome titled, Microbirth. In 2015, he received the James G Wilson Award from The Teratology Society for the Best Paper of Year (2014) with a peer-reviewed publication on the
microbiome.