Ben Smith is the Director for the newly formed Innovations in Food and Chemical Safety Programme at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore’s lead government agency for innovation. He joins A*STAR from the specialty ingredients industry where he worked for the Swiss flavour and fragrance company Firmenich S.A. as their chief safety scientist.
Initially trained as a toxicologist and chemist he started his studies in environmental toxicology before switching his focus to applied toxicology. Nowadays his research efforts are focused on developing and improving safety and risk assessment methods for chemicals. He is particularly interested in the integration of non-animal testing methods into the safety assessment approach for food and consumer product ingredients (both screening and in silico techniques), better understanding of the role of thresholds for genotoxic substances in food and the improvement of flavor and food additive intake models.