Meet CFSAN Leadership
Donald A. Prater, D.V.M.
Acting Director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
Steven M. Musser, Ph.D.
Deputy Center Director for Scientific Operations
Douglas Stearn, J.D.
Deputy Center Director for Regulatory Affairs
Rebecca J. Buckner, Ph.D.
Acting Deputy Center Director for Regulatory Policy, Nutrition, and Engagement
Donald Prater, D.V.M.
Acting Director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
Dr. Donald A. Prater is Acting Director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, He previously was Acting Director of the FDA’s Office of Food Policy and Response (OFPR). In 2019, he was named the Associate Commissioner for Imported Food Safety in OFPR, providing direction to and management of imported food safety programs. In addition, he served as a senior scientific advisor and technical expert on matters related to human and animal food safety and the implementation of the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act.
Before joining OFPR, Dr. Prater was the Assistant Commissioner for Food Safety Integration, serving as the principal spokesperson on behalf of the FDA’s Foods and Veterinary Medicine Program for discussions regarding imports with external stakeholders, including foreign governments, as well as being responsible for import-related strategic resource planning activities. Earlier in his FDA tenure, Dr. Prater was Director of the FDA’s Europe Office in Brussels, Belgium and the Department of Health and Human Services Country Representative to the European Union.
Dr. Prater received a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine (government and corporate track) in 1996. Following a three-year residency in anatomic pathology, he joined the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) in 1999 as a Veterinary Medical Officer. There he served in several roles including leader of the Aquaculture Drugs Team, CVM Pathologist, and Director of the Division of Scientific Support.
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, J.D.
Deputy Center Director for Regulatory Affairs
Douglas Stearn is currently serving as the deputy director for regulatory affairs for the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 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, outbreak response, and dietary supplements.
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. 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.
Rebecca J. Buckner, Ph.D.
Acting Deputy Center Director for Regulatory Policy, Nutrition, and Engagement
Dr. Rebecca Buckner is currently serving as Acting Deputy Center Director for Regulatory Policy, Nutrition, and Engagement for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). In both her acting role and her permanent position as a Senior Science Policy Advisor to the Center Director, Dr. Buckner’s portfolio includes regulation and guidance development, nutrition issues including infant formula oversight activities, and communications and international policy issues.
In her 25 years with FDA’s Foods Program, Dr. Buckner has served in a variety of roles. She was previously Policy Director to the FDA Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response in the Office of Food Policy and Response and Senior Science Advisor to the FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods and Veterinary Medicine. In the latter role, Dr. Buckner managed the development of the seven foundational rules mandated by the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) and the implementation of those rulemakings and other FSMA mandates for the FDA Foods Program. Dr. Buckner also served twice as Acting Associate Commissioner for Foods and Veterinary Medicine, where she was responsible, along with the Deputy Commissioner, for oversight of FDA’s Food and Veterinary Medicine program.
Prior to the enactment of FSMA, Dr. Buckner was a Food Technologist with CFSAN for 10 years. Her work at CFSAN included policy development on product/pathogen pairs such as shell eggs and Salmonella Enteritidis, ready-to-eat foods and Listeria monocytogenes, and agents causing diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as “mad cow disease.”
She received a Ph.D. in food chemistry from Purdue University.