Mark Rasmussen will be giving a seminar to conclude the search for the new director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at 2 p.m. Monday in room 8 of Curtiss Hall.

Rasmussen received both a Bachelor of Science in agriculture and a Master of Science in animal science from the University of Nebraska. He also has a Ph.D in dairy science from the University of Illinois and an MBA from Iowa State.

Rasmussen currently serves as the supervisory microbiologist and director of the Division of Animal and Food Microbiology in the Office of Research at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine in Laurel, Md. While there, he has focused on the microbiology of animal feed and studied how to prevent an animal’s gastrointestinal tract from becoming resistant to antimicrobial drugs by use of plant secondary compounds. He also teaches a course on animal health management at the University of Maryland.

Rasmussen has worked at Iowa State, where he taught graduate courses on rumen microbiology and sociology. He also served as a collaborating faculty member in the animal science and biomedical sciences department while working at the USDA-ARS National Animal Disease Center in Ames.

A live stream of the forum will be available at the Leopold Center website. The seminars given by the other two finalists, Abdullah Jaradat and Thanos Papanicolaou, are also available for viewing.