Several players in the dietary supplement and functional foods industries recently announced new additions to already credible rosters, bringing years of experience and expertise to the table.

Amin Talati became Amin Talati & Upadhye with the addition of its newest member, Shashank Upadhye. Upadhye, who will oversee areas relating to drug approval, drug marketing, supply chain management, marketing and data exclusivity issue, has experience with legal and regulatory matters in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

Meanwhile, Algatechnologies (Algatech) announced the appointment of Ronnie Meninger as CEO. Hagai Stadler of Grovepoint (Algatech's major shareholder) served the last two years as an interim CEO and will become a director on the board of directors. In addition, Sammy Boussiba Ph.D., was appointed to chief scientist on Algatech's board of directors.

BI Nutraceuticals appointed Michael Wagner to the position of food science engineer. Wagner will assist in providing solutions for complex functional food formulation challenges faced by BI’s customer base, and he comes to BI with a Ph.D. from the Department of Food Science at Cornell University.

Sabinsa Corporation added two new team members, with Rick McNail joining as eastern regional sales manager and Jan A. Obirek as regional sales manager – California. McNail brings sales and marketing experience to Sabinsa, with past positions within related companies that have enriched his background with experience in nutritional supplement contract manufacturing. Obirek is a business executive with more than 25 years of experience in sales management at the regional, national and international levels in the natural, mass and drug channels.

Michael Baim, Ph.D., joined Q Laboratories Inc. as chemistry laboratory supervisor. Baim will be responsible for the everyday operations of the Pharmaceutical & Food Chemistry labs. Baim has a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from Washington State University, where he was an American Chemical Society analytical research fellow.