# Elsa Murano

Elsa Alina Murano (born Elsa Alina Casales de la Caridad; August 14, 1959) is a Cuban-born American executive who has been the Director of the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture & Development at Texas A&M University's Agriculture & Life Sciences program since 2012. Before that, she served as the 23rd president of Texas A&M University from January 3, 2008, until her resignation on June 15, 2009.
From August 2021 to June 2022, she temporarily stepped away from her duties in the Institute to assume the role of Associate Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives at Texas A&M's Agriculture & Life Sciences Program, where she focused on federal initiatives engagement.
Murano also served as the Vice Chancellor and Dean of Texas A&M's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences from 2005 to 2007 and as the U.S. Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety from 2001 to 2004.
In 2006, Murano joined the board of directors at Hormel Foods. In 2024, she joined the board of directors at Blue Bell Creameries.

## Early life and education

Elsa Alina Casales de la Caridad was born on August 14, 1959, in Havana, Cuba, eight months after the end of the Cuban Revolution. Her family fled Cuba on July 4, 1961, moving first to Curaçao and later to Colombia, where her father worked for IBM. Subsequently, they moved to Peru and El Salvador before settling in Puerto Rico where she began kindergarten.
Following her parents' divorce in 1973, Murano relocated with her mother and three siblings to Miami, Florida, where she graduated from Coral Park Senior High School in 1977. She then attended Miami Dade College, a local junior college, while working at Kelly Tractor Company in the Service Department. After earning her associate degree from Miami-Dade, she transferred to Florida International University (FIU), supporting her education through loans and scholarships. Murano completed her bachelor's degree in biological sciences at FIU in 1981.
Originally intending to pursue a career in medicine, Murano developed an interest in research after participating in a project exploring the potential of CBD and THC extracts in preventing tumor formation in predisposed mice. This shift in interest led her to enroll in the graduate program at Virginia Tech where she earned a master's degree in anaerobic microbiology in 1987. Her studies focused on the role of bacterial cell walls in stimulating the immune system for tumor prevention.
Murano earned a doctorate in food science and technology in 1990, specialising in food safety. In 1985, during her graduate school years, she married Peter Murano, a fellow student she had met at FIU.

## Professorships and USDA

From 1990 to 1995, Murano served as an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Preventive Medicine at Iowa State University. Concurrently, she held the position of researcher-in-charge at the food irradiation facility. Murano was granted tenure at Iowa State in less than five years..
Then, Murano became an Associate Professor of Food Science & Technology in the Department of Animal Science at Texas A&M University, where she also served as Associate Director of the Centre for Food Safety within the Institute for Food Science and Engineering. She later served as the director of the center from 1997 to 2001. In this role, she facilitated the establishment of an electron beam food irradiation facility on campus. Murano then became a Full Professor and was awarded the Sadie Hatfield Endowed Professorship in Agriculture. In 2001, President George W. Bush named Murano the Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). As the highest-ranking U.S. official for food safety, she represented U.S. food safety policy in international standard-setting organizations, such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission. Murano oversaw Food Safety and Inspection Service policies, ensuring that U.S. meat products met safety, wholesomeness, and packaging standards.
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 developed regulations that helped prevent it from entering the food supply. At the end of President Bush's first term in office, Murano returned to Texas A&M University, where she assumed the position of Vice Chancellor and Dean of Agriculture & Life Sciences.

## Return to Texas A&M

In January 2005, Murano became the first woman and first Hispanic person to hold the position of Vice Chancellor of Agricultural and Life Sciences in the Texas A&M University System. She concurrently served as Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Director of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.
On January 3, 2008, the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents voted to appoint Murano president of Texas A&M. She was the first female, the first Hispanic-American, and the first person under the age of 50 to serve in the position

### Return to the Faculty

Murano resigned as president of Texas A&M University in June 2009 following disagreements with Chancellor Mike McKinney over administrative policies.
Murano disagreed with Chancellor McKinney on several issues. Perhaps the most significant was his view that faculty should be assigned either research or teaching duties, not both. Murano argued that this would be extremely detrimental to Texas A&M, given that faculty would vehemently object to it, resulting in many leaving their positions. She argued that the university's reputation would be severely damaged, changing it from a Tier 1 research and academic institution to a community college. Chancellor McKinney had often stated the desire for regents to consider merging the positions of chancellor and president to save money. Such a statement raised a lot of suspicions as to whether McKinney had been planning this from the start of President Murano's tenure, engaging in policies designed to challenge her so that she would either be President in name only, or cause her to resign so he could assume both positions and thereby be in complete control of the University, enabling him to make changes, and essentially ignoring the principle of shared governance. For her part, President Murano argued that Chancellor McKinney would frequently exclude her from decisions, working out secret agreements with private companies to commercialize scientific advances, and providing them with university funds without any due process or input by her administration. On June 9, 2009, the Faculty Senate at Texas A&M University met and issued a vote of "no confidence" on Chancellor McKinney, as well as a statement of full support for President Murano. Professor Angie Hill-Price, Speaker of the Faculty Senate, was quoted as saying, "Murano has always worked very hard to engage faculty, she understands what shared governance means, and she's worked very hard implementing that at the university."
The Board of Regents awarded her the title of President Emerita. Murano resumed her faculty position and restarted her research program by securing a $1.2M grant from USDA as the lead investigator of a consortium of Texas A&M scientists to work on determining how microbial pathogens contaminate produce in the field. About a year later, a new Board of Regents officially told Chancellor McKinney to resign from his position. McKinney later resigned following continued criticism from faculty and staff.

### Director of the Norman E. Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture

In 2012, Professor Murano was asked to serve as Director of the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture by then Vice Chancellor and Dean of Agriculture Mark Hussey. Under Murano’s leadership, the institute secured significant federal funding for international agricultural projects. In September 2021, she served as Associate Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives for then Vice Chancellor and Dean Patrick Stover. She appointed Julie Howe as the Principal Investigator. Murano then resumed her position as Director of the Borlaug Institute in July 2022.

## Other awards and recognition

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.
2008: Murano was inducted into the Texas Woman of the Year Hall of Fame, named to the Carnegie Corporation of New York's list of "Great Immigrants, Great Americans," and 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..
2009: Murano was inducted into the Miami-Dade College Alumni Hall of Fame, where she had previously earned an Associate of Arts degree in 1979..
2022: Murano was 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. She had she earned her Master's degree in Anaerobic Microbiology (1987) and her PhD degree in Food Science & Technology (1990) at this institution.
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. She currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maiz y Trigo (CIMMYT). Evident of her standing in the field of food safety, and 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), as a member of the Council of Advisors to the World Food Prize Foundation, and as a member of the Board of Semilla Nueva, a non-profit organization focused on providing improved corn varieties to farmers in Guatemala.
She was also appointed as a Fellow of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at the George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.