Elsa Murano

Elsa Alina Casales de la Caridad was born August 14, 1959, in Havana, Cuba. She was born eight months after the end of the Cuban Revolution. She fled Cuba with her family on July 4, 1961, when her parents decided to leave the country.[7] The family fled to Curaçao, and then moved to Colombia, where her father worked for IBM. She later lived in Peru and then El Salvador before moving to Puerto Rico to start kindergarten. Once her parents divorced, she moved with her mother and three siblings into an apartment in Miami, Florida in 1973. Although Murano spoke very little English upon her arrival, she enrolled at West Miami Junior High School and became fluent in the language. Her mother, who worked as a security guard and a department store clerk, urged the children to graduate high school and to attend college, encouraging them to pursue their dreams and make the most of opportunities in their new adopted homeland. In 1977, Murano graduated from Coral Park Senior High School in the top 10% of her graduating class, and enrolled full-time at Miami Dade College, a nearby junior college, while working 30 hrs/week at Kelly Tractor Company in the Service Department. After two years at Miami-Dade where she earned an associate degree, she transferred to Florida International University, relying on loans and scholarships to handle tuition costs. She received her bachelor's degree in biological sciences from FIU in 1981.

Though she had planned on attending medical school as a pre-med Biology major, she became more interested in research after working with a professor on a project focused on determining the mechanism by which tumor formation in pre-disposed mice could be prevented by administration of CBD and THC extracts. She applied and was accepted into the graduate program at Virginia Tech where she received a master's degree in anaerobic microbiology in 1987, focusing on the role of bacterial cell walls on stimulation of the immune system for tumor prevention. Murano then earned a doctorate in food science and technology in 1990 with specialty in food safety.[8] While in graduate school in 1985, she married Peter Murano, whom she had met at FIU. He is now a retired professor of Nutrition and Food Science at Texas A&M University and served as Deputy Administrator of Food and Nutrition Service at USDA, where he was in charge of the National School Lunch Program, WIC, and other programs under President George W. Bush.

From 1990 to 1995, Murano served as an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Preventive Medicine at Iowa State University where she also served as Researcher-in-Charge of the Food Irradiation Facility.[9] In 1995, she was granted tenure at Iowa State after less than 5 years in her position, a highly-unusual accomplishment in academia, indicative of the outstanding work she had conducted in grantsmanship and publications in her field of study. Shortly thereafter, she was recruited by Texas A&M and became associate professor of Food Science & Technology in the Department of Animal Science, as well as associate director of the Center for Food Safety within the Institute for Food Science and Engineering. She later served as director of the center from 1997 to 2001. In that capacity, she was instrumental in entering into an agreement with Surebeam for the construction of a state-of-the-art electron beam food irradiation facility on campus, which continues to operate to this day. As a result of her leadership as a researcher, administrator, and educator, Murano was promoted to full professor and received the Sadie Hatfield Endowed Professorship in Agriculture.

In 2001, due to Murano's reputation as one of the top experts in her field , U.S. president George W. Bush appointed her as the Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the highest ranking food safety U.S. government official, representing U.S. food safety policy at international standard-setting organizations such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission. As the Undersecretary, she oversaw Food Safety and Inspection Service policies, ensuring U.S. meat products are safe, wholesome, and correctly packaged.[10] Over the years in her position, she led efforts that resulted in dramatic decreases in the number of food recalls. Food recalls, which had been rising since the mid-1990s, decreased by more than 50%, from 113 in 2002 to less than 50 in 2004 under her leadership.[7][11] Most importantly, the rate of illnesses due to E. coli O157:H7 was decreased by 42%, attaining the CDC's Healthy People 2010 Goals for Foodborne Illnesses due to this organism 6 years ahead of schedule, an amazing accomplishment . In addition, under Murano's leadership, regulations were introduced that resulted in the successful control of contamination of meat products with Listeria monocytogenes. After the first case of mad cow disease was detected in the U.S., Murano and her team at the Food Safety and Inspection Service promptly developed regulations that effectively prevented it from entering the food supply. At the end of President Bush's first term in office, Murano decided to return to Texas A&M to assume a new position, that of Vice Chancellor and Dean of Agriculture & Life Sciences.[12]

Dr, Murano returned to Texas A&M in January 2005, becoming the first woman and first Hispanic to be named Vice Chancellor of Agricultural and Life Sciences of the Texas A&M University System, Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Director of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.[8] During her tenure, Vice Chancellor Murano dramatically reversed the declining trend in student enrollment in the College of Agriculture, secured more than $40M for bio-fuels research initiative from private industry, increased legislative appropriations by 26%, and secured $50M from the Texas A&M System to build a new Agriculture Headquarters Complex. Such was her rapid rise to prominence within the University, that in December 2007 she became the sole finalist for the Texas A&M presidency, previously held by Robert Gates, who vacated the position in 2006 to become the U.S. Secretary of Defense.[13] The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents voted 8–1 in support of her. Once Murano had taken full duties as president on January 3, 2008,[14] she became the first female, the first Hispanic-American, and the first person under the age of 50 to serve in the position.[5]

In her first-year, President Murano spearheaded a university-wide strategic planning initiative with the active participation of the deans of each college, resulting in the development of a plan designed to comply with the goals of Vision 2020, which had been developed by President Ray Bowen in the latter part of the 1990s, and which had begun to be addressed by President Robert Gates until his departure in 2006. President Murano's plan was encompassed in the acronym "AGGIE" with the following initiatives highlighting the plan: A=Academic quality, G=Great value, G=Globalization, I=Infrastructure, and E=Enlightened governance. As a result of the plan, the university's State appropriations were increased by more than $40M, enrollment of Hispanic students increased by 23% and of African-Americans by 17%, largely through a new initiative termed "Do You Wonder?", the Memorial Student Center was successfully renovated in record-time at a cost savings (see below), the "Aggie Assurance" tuition aid program was launched (see below), and Military Walk was fully renovated after securing a generous donation from a former student. President Murano spearheaded a collaboration between Texas A&M and the University of Texas, working hand-in-hand with President Bill Powers to convince the Texas legislature to double the funding for the Competitive Knowledge Fund, which supports research infrastructure at both universities (https://www.aggienetwork.com/media/guides/texas%20aggie/2009/0109%20orange%20maroon%20legislative%20day.pdf). As a direct result of President Murano's efforts, Texas A&M's ranking in U.S. News & World Report rose from 25th to 21st during her tenure.

In 2005, Murano was awarded the "American By Choice" Award by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services of the Department of Homeland Security, along with Nobel Prize Laureate Eli Wiesel. In 2008, along with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Murano was inducted into the Texas Woman of the Year Hall of Fame. That same year, she was named to the Carnegie Corporation of New York's list of "Great Immigrants, Great Americans". Murano has been named Outstanding Alumna of all three of the institutions where she earned her degrees. In 2008, she was named Outstanding Alumna of Florida International University, where she earned her Bachelor's of Science degree in 1981, receiving the FIU Medallion at a ceremony on campus. In 2009, Murano was inducted into the Miami-Dade College Alumni Hall of Fame, where she had earned an Associate of Arts degree in 1979. Murano was then awarded the Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture & Life Sciences Outstanding Alumna in the Global Community in 2022 at its Celebration of Ut Prosim event at the institution where she earned both her Master's degree in Anaerobic Microbiology (1987) and her PhD degree in Food Science & Technology (1990).

Dr. Murano has been the invited speaker in almost 200 venues, such as servings as commencement speaker at Texas A&M University in 2007, Florida International University in 2008, Virginia Tech in 2009, and El Zamorano University in 2023. In addition to her professional appointments during her career, Murano has been serving on the Board of Hormel Foods Corporation since 2006, on the Board of Food Safety Net Services from 2010 to 2021, and on the Food Safety Advisory Board for Ecolab, Inc. In 2019, she was elected Vice-Chair of the Board of Trustees of the International Livestock Research Institute, a research center that is part of the CGIAR System. She was subsequently elected Chair in 2021, and has been extended to serve until 2024. Evident of her standing in the field of food safety, agriculture, as well as in academia and government service, Murano was asked to serve on an advisory committee to NASA's Food Production Laboratory to help identify issues to be considered in developing foods for long-term missions to Mars. In 2018, Murano was named "Maestro of Community Service" by Latino Leaders Magazine's Maestro Awards, and selected as Women Inc. Magazine's "One of the Most Influential Corporate Board Directors". In 2019, in recognition of her many accomplishments as Undersecretary, Murano was inducted into the Meat Industry Hall of Fame.

In 2020, Murano was appointed to the Council of Advisors to the Director General of the Interamerican Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture (IICA), as a member of the Steering Committee for the Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for Agricultural and Life Sciences (GCHERA), and as a member of the Council of Advisors to the World Food Prize Foundation, considered to be the "Nobel prize" of agriculture.[18]

• Office of the President, Texas A&M University