Dr. Dennis D'Amico has spent his career serving the dairy industry in the Northeast. Building from his experiences as a founding member of the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese he continues to work closely with stakeholders to develop educational opportunities to provide established and aspiring producers with technical and scientific knowledge necessary to assure the consistent production of safe, high quality cheese and dairy products. At the University of Connecticut Dennis expanded his regional workshops into a harmonized training program to provide education on safe cheese‐making practices, regulations, and public policy. To date the Artisan/Farmstead Cheesemaker Food Safety Workshop program has directly reached over 750 attendees including cheesemakers, educators, retailers, and regulators across the U.S. He is currently involved several collaborative projects to develop online food safety training tools for small-scale cheesemakers including the creation of multimedia case studies using virtual realty. At the regional level, Dennis continues to build an integrated research, education, and outreach program focused on supporting and enhancing the safety and quality of value-added dairy production. He has worked directly with more than 40 small dairy businesses in the northeast providing technical expertise including training in control and monitoring activities to improve hygiene and reduce food safety risks as well as the formulation and development of new products. His laboratory group concurrently conducts basic and applied research to fill data gaps and develop preventive controls for small dairy producers to further minimize the risks of contamination. His research lab also serves as an educational tool through the mentoring of graduate and undergraduate students on research in dairy science and microbiology. At UConn, Dennis also developed Dairy Technology classes that emphasize hands on learning activities scientific writing so that students can further explore their specific interests in dairy science while developing their research and writing skills. As part his education and outreach mission he also serves on the Board of Directors of the American Cheese Society (ACS) and helped to write and edit the ACS Code of Best Practices published this year as a reference and educational tool for small cheese producers. In addition to more than 30 abstracts and peer-reviewed journal articles and 17 invited presentations, Dennis has published several book chapters, entries, and reviews, and serves on the technical committee for the 18th Edition of Standard Methods for the Examination of Dairy Products.