Sylvain Charlebois

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois (born 1970) writes columns regularly for Montreal's La Presse, Toronto's The Globe and Mail, and also writes a blog for the Canadian Grocer magazine called "The Food Professor".

Charlebois is a Canadian researcher in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University. He is also Dalhousie's eleventh Dean of the Faculty of Management and holds a cross-appointment as Professor at Dalhousie University Faculty of Agriculture.

Charlebois was a Professor in the College of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, from 2010 to 2016. In 2011, he co-founded the University of Guelph's Food Institute (now the Arrell Food Institute). From 2004 to 2010, he was a member of the Faculty of Business Administration of the University of Regina in Regina, Canada. He has served as Acting Dean, Associate Dean for the College of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph. He also served as the Director of the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy (Regina Campus), also affiliated with the University of Saskatchewan. As Director, in 2009, he became one of the youngest university Deans in Canada.

Charlebois has authored nearly 500 publications in peer-reviewed journals, professional publications, conference proceedings in Food Science and Management. He is known for being the lead author of many reports which compare global food safety and traceability systems. In 2011, Charlebois chaired the first International Workshop on food safety performance metrics and risk intelligence in Helsinki, Finland, during which 21 countries were represented. He is the project lead for the World Ranking Food Safety Performance Report (2008, 2010, 2014).

Now published by Dalhousie University, he is the project lead of Canada's Food Price Report (2011 to 2017). The report was published by the University of Guelph from 2011 to 2016. It is estimated that the report is accessed by over 500 million people in 85 countries annually. In 2015, the project was recognized as one of the University of Guelph's most significant research accomplishments over the past 50 years.

He is the author of five books on global food systems, one in French, an essay on food security and safety. His most recent academic book is entitled "Food Safety, Risk Intelligence and Benchmarking", published by Wiley-Blackwell (2017). According to Google Scholar, he is one of the world's most cited scholars in food supply chain management, food value chains and traceability.

His current research interest lies in the broad area of food distribution and safety, and has published many articles in several top academic journals food science and management. Dr. Charlebois is an associate researcher with many research centres and think tanks and has worked with the CD Howe Institute and the Conference Board of Canada. His research has been featured in a number of publications, including The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, The Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star, Maclean's and La Presse, as well as on NBC, ABC, Fox News, BBC, the Business News Network, CBC Radio and CBC Television, Global, CTV, TVOntario and TVA. He has conducted media interviews in several countries including the United States, many European countries, Russia, Philippines, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and India.

Charlebois has conducted live case studies for years now. In his approach, Charlebois attempts to incorporate realism and the concept of Co-opetition in the classroom. He believes that the simultaneity of competition and cooperation in a live case study setting makes for a profoundly powerful learning experience for students.

He is a co-author of Real People, Real Decisions published by Pearson Education Canada.

Dr. Charlebois is a member of both the National Scientific Committee and the National Expert Board of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency since 2011. Since 2013, he also a member of the Global Food Traceability Center's Advisory Council [1] based in Washington, D.C.. He sits on a few company boards, and supports many organizations as a special advisor, including some publicly traded companies [2]. He has testified on several occasions before parliamentary committees on food policy-related issues as an expert witness. He has been asked to act as an advisor on food and agricultural policies in many Canadian provinces, in the United States, Brazil, Italy, France, Belgium, China, Great Britain, Finland and the Netherlands. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, at the University of Helsinki in Finland, at NorthWestern A&F University in China, and at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

Charlebois is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Business Scientific Institute based in Luxemburg.

Charlebois is a two-time winner of the prestigious International Emerald Lit Award in research (2008, 2012). He has done a TEDx talk on global trades and emerging agricultural economies. He is also a three-time "Teacher of the Year" award winner while in Saskatchewan, in 2006, 2007 and 2009. In 2006, MacLean's Magazine recognized him as one of the best university professors in the country. In 2015, he also won the Bill Braithwaite Distinguished Professorial Award as a graduate Faculty at the University of Guelph.

Charlebois holds degrees from the Royal Military College of Canada, the Université de Montréal and the Université de Sherbrooke.