Alan R. Olsen is the Director and Chief Entomologist of the San Francisco District Laboratory of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Alameda, California., Over the past 22 years, he has served as an entomologist in FDA laboratories. His experience includes thousands of laboratory analyses of foods for filth contamination, more than 100 field investigations of food-handling establishments and a dozen scientific research projects. He has lectured at national and international symposia and chaired regional and national workshops in microanalytical entomology., Chief Entomologist Olsen served as a Peace Corps volunteer from 1966 to 1969 in the Palau Islands in Micronesia, where he taught school and studied island insects and other fauna. In 1971 he received a B.S. in Entomology from the University of Arizona. He first worked for the FDA in Seattle, Washington, from 1972 to 1978. From 1978 to 1992 he worked in the Los Angeles FDA laboratory, where he supervised the Entomology Section since 1982. In 1992, he assumed directorship of the San Francisco FDA laboratory. He is recipient of the FDA Award of Merit, the agency’s highest honor, for his individual scientific achievements in entomology., Director Olsen is a member of the Pacific Coast Entomological Society, the Entomological Society of Washington, the Society for Vector Ecology, the American Arachnological Society and the Northern California Spider Society. He is recognized in A Decade o f Acarology (1987). He is the author of chapters in two FDA technical manuals and of 15 articles on a wide variety of topics in entomology including insect fragment identification, animal hair identification, mite taxonomy, field studies and review articles. He is the scientific review authority for the FDA laboratory in Alameda and a recognized expert in microanalytical entomology., His current research interests are the taxonomy of stored-product mites, ethnoentomology and the natural history of the terrestrial arthropods of the Palau Islands. He is President of the Kerallang Natural History Institute in Palau and a fluent speaker of the Palauan language.
