Who We Are
The Bionutrient Institute team is a global collection of scientists, technicians, engineers, organizers, and others working toward our collective goal to define nutrient density.
THE BFA TEAM
Dan Kittredge
Founder/Executive Director
Dan Kittredge has been an organic farmer for more than 30 years and is the founder and executive director of the Bionutrient Food Association (BFA), a non-profit whose mission is to “increase quality in the food supply.” Known as one of the leading proponents of “nutrient density,” Dan works to demonstrate the connections between soil health, plant health, and human health.
Eric Jackson
Development & Partnerships
The Bionutrient Food Association has been working for the past 10 years to increase quality in the food supply. My background in supply chain and ag tech was primarily focused on increasing quantity, not quality. I’m making my amends by assisting in the creation of the Bionutrient Institute to accelerate the science necessary to help farmers create higher quality crops, improve soil health and move from an extractive agricultural paradigm to a regenerative systems approach. I believe that healthy communities derive from just food systems, which rely on healthy ecosystems as their source.
After a 38+ year career of devoting my energies to all things commercial in the food and ag space, I have decided to focus my remaining productivity on bending the arc of the future of food in the right direction. I’m working on regenerative food systems through several initiatives. I call this phase Act Three.
Act Two was the in between years. After leaving the corporate world in 2007, I launched a number of initiatives to explore soil carbon sequestration, ag tech development and organic supply chain management.
Act One, my first 25 years after college, was solely dedicated to maximizing profits for three different companies—The Scoular Company, International Proteins Corporation and The Pillsbury Company, where I began my career. While I was successful at these endeavors, I now realize that my time could have been better spent if I had any clue about alternative paths.
I graduated with a B.S. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Illinois. Son of a PhD in Physics and a B.A. in Fine Arts. Born in MA, raised in IL, living in MN since 1983 (except 5 years in NJ between ’88-’93).
Amanda Pinelli
Managing Director
Amanda is a strong executor of big visions. Trained in finance, she started off operating in the old paradigm, and in 2015 broadened her lens on the impact of business leading to a shift her focus to impact. She recently co-founded an investment cooperative to support regenerative businesses, help build the investment thesis and launch a regenerative ag venture fund, has supported early-stage companies as a fractional CFO, and operated multi-national organizations at the C-level. Amanda considers herself a bridge to enabling change, and shows up with her infectious enthusiasm to address human health via our food systems.
Shawna Lyons
Partnerships and Community Coordinator
Shawna loves adventure and challenge. One of her favorite quotes is “this is the way we’ve always done it” because she sees that as a ripe opportunity for change and growth. She recently helped a local non-profit keep from closing its doors by identifying an additional area of need that launched a new direction for the organization and restructured a high input farming program by developing a living soil system, greatly reducing labor needs and inputs. She looks at the world through the lens of "we are where we are by choice and we can get to where we want to be by choice" nothing has to stay the way it is. Shawna has been involved in growing food for over 25 years-from an apprentice to a homesteader to a farm manager and now a consultant- She has turned her suburban backyard into a mini-farm complete with rabbits, chickens and over 50 varieties of crops. She has a degree in Soil and Crop Sciences with a focus on Organic Agriculture. Once she was introduced to the BFA, she never looked back. She is honored to be supporting communities built around nutrient dense foods and regenerative farming practices.
OUR SCI
Greg Austic
Researcher
Greg coordinates implementation of the observational study and partner labs, development of the BI meter, and the software infrastructure to maintain and analyze the data.
Open technology advocate, co-organizer of the GOSH and the GOAT. Jack of all trades capable of getting an idea off the ground quickly and inexpensively.
Dr. Dan TerAvest Ph.D.
Soil Scientist
Dr. Dan TerAvest is a Soil Scientist and co-founder of Our Sci LLC. For the past 5 years he has been bridging the divide between tool development and user experience, coordinating between technical and user teams in the US, Africa, and Australia to develop appropriate tools and methods. Dan is currently leading development of SoilStack, a smart soil sampling app to quantify soil carbon at the field and landscape scales.
BI Role:
Dan developed and led the Bionutrient Institute’s grower and citizen science partner programs prior to 2021. He also implements the Bionutrient Institutes distributed data collection pipeline, ensuring that partners can capture the sample metadata (how the food was grown, labelled, etc) needed to build a robust library of food, soil and management data.
Barbara Nainiger
Lab Tech
Barbara works as a lab tech in the Ann Arbor lab. She intakes vegetable samples and performs the wet chemistry on them to quantify their polyphenol, antioxidant, or protein content.
Graduating from Ohio State, she has a degree in Biology and Environmental Science and is pursuing a masters degree with SEAS at the University of Michigan with a concentration in geospatial science.
In her free time she likes to sail and play with my Chihuahua, Fluke.
Adie Pregenzer
Community Success Specialist
A Michigan State University graduate in Environmental Sustainability with a background in responsible sourcing, quality operations, and community sustainability. Adie is a community success specialist with the Bionutrient Institute Beef and Organizational Partner programs.
Puspa Ghimire
Laboratory Manager
Puspa was born and raised in a farming community in rural Nepal. She did her undergraduate studies in Agriculture (Purbanchal University 2004-2007, Nepal). Upon graduation, she utilized her knowledge to gain further experience on improving sustainable livelihood of the marginalized farmers through Bio Intensive Farming Systems (BIFS) by working as an Agriculture Program Officer in Eastern Nepal (2008-2010). She completed her Masters of Professional Studies in Horticulture from University of Minnesota (2012-2015). Prior to this role, Puspa managed a Nutrient media preparation lab for the Research communities across the United States (2018-2021).
CHICO STATE LAB
Dr. Cynthia Daley
Director of the Regenerative Agriculture Program
Dr. Cynthia A. Daley completed her BS in animal science at the University of Illinois and her PhD at the University of California, Davis in 1997.
Cynthia Daley is a professor within the College of Agriculture at California State University, Chico, where she supervises and directs the Organic Dairy Program (ODP), a program she founded together with dairy manager Darby Heffner and members of the organic dairy industry in 2006. The program has evolved into a very successful organic livestock enterprise at the University Farm, employing 10 students/semester, six directed work interns, and two full time staff. The program provides education and training in organic pasture management and livestock production practices to students and farmers through courses, workshops, field days and conferences.
With the launch of the ODP in 2006, Daley worked with a group of progressive organic dairy farmers to create the Western Organic Dairy Producers Alliance, a grassroots organization that serves as the voice for producers in the western region. Through these industry relationships the concept of the Regenerative Agriculture Initiative (RAI) was born. Dr. Daley currently serves as Co-Director of the Regenerative Ag Initiative which represents an interdisciplinary team of faculty and farmers who recognize the ecological benefits of regenerative farming practices. Agriculture, when done regeneratively, can be the solution to soil degradation and climate change.
FRANCE LAB
Pierre Weill
Agronomist
French agronomist Pierre Weill founded Valorex in the early 90s, a feed company dedicated to health-oriented animal nutrition. Throughout the 90s, he published his work in the peer-reviewed scientific press, research that supported the idea that compared to the “corn-soy” dominant system, “omega-3 feed” (with more grass, alfalfa and linseed) enables better health (fertility and immunity) in animal production. Building on these insights, Pierre next began researching how these different animal diets impacted human nutrition. Clinical human studies done in 2000 demonstrated the link between variety in the fields, animal health and human health and was published for the first time.
Pierre then created the non-profit Bleu-Blanc-Coeur to involve all the actors of the food chain in this public health project. One goal of Bleu-Blanc-Coeur and the next step of the project has been to integrate an understanding of the environmental impact, with an eye toward its improvement. Over the last 20 years, numerous clinical trials have supplied much data and scientific insights that have contributed to the Bleu-Blanc-Coeur project, including greenhouse gas measurement and life-cycle assessment.
The idea that there is a measurable and interconnected link between the health of the planet, soils, animals and humans is now supported by top scientists. Bleu-Blanc-Coeur has continued to grow in France and beyond, and drives the idea that healthy soils are the basis for healthy people.
UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY LAB
Dr. Stephan van Vliet
Assistant Professor - Center for Human Nutrition Studies
Dr. Stephan van Vliet is a nutrition scientist with metabolomics expertise in the Center for Human Nutrition Studies at Utah State University. Dr. Stephan van Vliet earned his PhD in Kinesiology as an ESPEN Fellow from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and received training at the Washington University in St Louis School of Medicine and Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. van Vliet’s research is performed at the nexus of agricultural and human health. He routinely collaborates with farmers, ecologists, and agricultural scientists to study critical linkages between agricultural production methods, the nutrient density of food, and human health. His work has been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Scientific Reports, the Journal of Nutrition, and the Journal of Physiology.
SOFTWARE & STATISTICS
Octavio Duarte
Data Analyst
Octavio does data centric work: Statistics and Data Analysis, Data Engineering and Data Visualization. That is, I design the processes that transform collected pieces of data into organized and coherent information, and both do research on the patterns found within that information to test our colleague's hypotheses and predictive models based on it and communicate our findings via visualizations and interactive dashboards.
Born (1988) and living in Buenos Aires, Professor in Mathematics from Universidad Tecnológica Nacional, Specialist in Mathematical Statistics from Universidad de Buenos Aires. I have worked as a mathematics professor in Universidad de Tres de Febrero (2011-2020) and assistant professor at Universidad de Buenos Aires (2020-) until joining Our Sci in May 2020. Since then, I'm working as a data scientist for them in the context of the Real Food Campaign.
Manuel Di Cerbo
Software Developer
Manuel is a full-stack developer and leads the team which builds the BIs software infrastructure.
Head of Software Engineering at Our Sci and professor of FHNW in Switzerland. Has a strong background in Embedded Systems and excels in bringing technologies together rapidly.