Meet CFSAN Leadership
Susan T. Mayne, Ph.D.
Director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
Leslie Kux, JD
Deputy Center Director for Regulatory Policy, Nutrition, and Engagement
Steven M. Musser, Ph.D.
Deputy Center Director for Scientific Operations
Douglas Stearn
Deputy Center Director for Regulatory Affairs
Susan T. Mayne, Ph.D.
Director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
Susan Mayne is the Director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In this position, Dr. Mayne leads the Center’s development and implementation of programs and policies related to the composition, quality, safety, and labeling of foods, food and color additives, and cosmetics. CFSAN’s responsibilities also include fostering the development of healthier foods and ensuring that consumers have access to accurate and useful information to make healthy food choices.
An internationally recognized public health leader and scientist, Dr. Mayne received a B.A. in chemistry from the University of Colorado. She earned a Ph.D. in nutritional sciences, with minors in biochemistry and toxicology, from Cornell University.
Read Dr. Susan Mayne's Full Bio
Leslie Kux, JD
Deputy Center Director for Regulatory Policy, Nutrition, and Engagement
Leslie Kux is the Deputy Center Director for Regulatory Policy, Nutrition, and Engagement at CFSAN. She leads and provides oversight and direction to the Office of Regulations and Policy, the Office of Nutrition and Food Labeling, the Office of Executive Programs, the International Affairs Staff and the Communications and Public Engagement Staff. In this capacity, she plays an active role in planning, developing, and implementing regulatory policy and policy initiatives that affect the Center’s broad, national and international programs and activities.
Prior to assuming her position at CFSAN, Ms. Kux was the Associate Commissioner for Policy and Director of the Office of Policy at FDA for 8 years. In that role, Ms. Kux advised the Commissioner and FDA leadership on a broad range of agency policy issues, and she oversaw, directed, and coordinated the agency's rulemaking activities and regulations development system. From 2006 – 2010, Ms. Kux was the Deputy Director of the Office of Compliance and Biologics Quality in FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
Ms. Kux received her law degree in 1986 from the George Washington University Law School. Before joining FDA, Ms. Kux practiced food and drug law in private practice. She started her career with FDA in 1988 in the Office of Chief Counsel.
Steven M. Musser, Ph.D.
Deputy Center Director for Scientific Operations
Dr. Musser is the Deputy Center Director for Scientific Operations at CFSAN. In addition to managing the Center’s scientific operations, he oversees the Center’s activities in cosmetics safety, color certification, pre-market review of food additives, food contact notifications and foods derived from bioengineered plants. He has directed the Center’s research in precedent setting areas of food and cosmetic safety research, which include food allergen detection, methods for detecting chemical contaminants, dietary supplement analysis, and the use of whole genome sequencing during foodborne illness outbreak investigations. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 articles in the peer reviewed scientific literature and regularly speaks on CFSAN’s research at national and international scientific meetings.
Dr. Musser received his B.S. degree in Biology from Millersville University and his Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry from the University of Maryland-Baltimore. He then completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute. He started his career at FDA in 1991 as a research chemist and became the Branch Chief of the Instrumentation and Biophysics Branch six years later. Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Musser was the Director of the Office of Regulatory Science at CFSAN.
Douglas Stearn
Deputy Center Director for Regulatory Affairs
Douglas Stearn is the Deputy Center Director for Regulatory Affairs at CFSAN. In this position, he has direct oversight and responsibility for regulatory programs overseeing the food supply under FDA’s jurisdiction, including compliance functions and regulatory programs involving food safety, dietary supplements, nutrition and food labeling, analytics, outreach, and international affairs.
He previously served as the Director of FDA’s Office of Enforcement and Import Operations between November 2013 and April 2018, where he had responsibility for overseeing the execution of the agency’s import operations and compliance activities that cut across the commodities FDA regulates. Between January 2009 and November 2013, Mr. Stearn served as the Assistant Director and then the Deputy Director of the Office of Compliance within FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).
Prior to joining CDER, Mr. Stearn served as the Director of the Division of Compliance Policy in the Office of Regulatory Affairs for almost two years. Mr. Stearn received his undergraduate degree from Brown University in 1987.
He received his law degree in 1991 from Cornell Law School. Immediately before joining FDA, Mr. Stearn worked as a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Consumer Litigation for over fifteen years. In the course of his work at the Department of Justice, Mr. Stearn litigated numerous civil and criminal cases referred by FDA and other consumer protection agencies.