Chester E. Rodriguez, PhD, DABT, ERT joined the Duke Toxicology Program in November 2018. Chester comes to Duke from the headquarters of the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta, Ga., where he was a global manager of risk assessment and toxicology. His duties included providing subject matter expertise internally and externally in the areas of Food Chemical Safety and Regulatory Science for ensuring that beverage ingredients were first and foremost safe and then compliant to different standards around the world. Prior to joining the Coca-Cola Company, Chester was a regulatory toxicologist for the U.S. EPA’s Office of Pesticides Programs in Washington, D.C., where he performed the duties of toxicologist and risk assessor for the registration of new and existing pesticides. Chester started his professional toxicologist career at the U.S. EPA’s National Center for Computational Toxicology in RTP, NC where he provided technical expertise to the agency concerning chemical risk associated with early-life exposures to environmental contaminants
Chester earned a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry/Mathematics and Master of Science in Chemistry from San Francisco State University. He then went on to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he earned a PhD in Pharmacology/Toxicology. Chester is a diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology (DABT) and an European Union Registered Toxicologist (ERT).