Biographical Info

Dr. William K. Hallman is a Professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA. An experimental psychologist with expertise in consumer perceptions of risk and risk communication, his scholarship has focused on numerous issues concerning health, food, technology, and the environment. He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, abstracts, and monographs, including studies of public perceptions, communications, and behavior change strategies involving environmental contaminants, unexplained symptom syndromes, infectious and non-infectious diseases, food safety, foodborne illness outbreaks, food recalls, food insecurity, food labeling, nutrition, and preventive health behaviors. He has also conducted extensive studies of consumer perceptions and acceptance of new food technologies including genetically modified foods, nanotechnology in food and agriculture, gene editing, and cell-cultured meat, poultry, and seafood.

Dr. Hallman is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis, and a Distinguished Research Fellow of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Climate Crossroads Advisory Committee, a member of the US FDA’s Nonprescription Drug Advisory Committee (NDAC), and a member of the Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness Recall Modernization Working Group. He has served as the Director of the Rutgers Food Policy Institute, as Chair of the FDA’s Risk Communication Advisory Committee, and as a U.S. Delegate to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Food Safety Cooperation Forum, which published the APEC Food Safety Risk Communication Framework and Associated Guidelines. He is a co-author of the Risk Communication Applied to Food Safety Handbook, published jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and the World Health Organization (WHO). He is also a co-author of Communicating Science Effectively, A Research Agenda, published by the National Academies.

Recent Publications

1. Errickson, LB, Jin, Y, Zemeckis, D, Hallman, WK. Seafood Consumption Trends among U.S. Consumers: Influences of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Foods. 2024;13 (17):. doi: 10.3390/foods13172682. PubMed PMID:39272448 PubMed Central PMC11394379
2. Ashby, E, Minicucci, C, Liao, J, Buonsenso, D, González-Dambrauskas, S, Obregón, R, Zahn, M, Hallman, W, John, C. Systems Thinking for Public Health: A Case Study Using U.S. Public Education. NAM Perspect. 2023;2023 :. doi: 10.31478/202311a. PubMed PMID:38784633 PubMed Central PMC11114595
3. McKeon, GP, Hallman, WK. Front-of-Package Protein Labels on Cereal Create Health Halos. Foods. 2024;13 (8):. doi: 10.3390/foods13081139. PubMed PMID:38672812 PubMed Central PMC11049005
4. Hallman, WK, Hallman, WK 2nd, Hallman, EE. Cell-based, cell-cultured, cell-cultivated, cultured, or cultivated. What is the best name for meat, poultry, and seafood made directly from the cells of animals?. NPJ Sci Food. 2023;7 (1):62. doi: 10.1038/s41538-023-00234-x. PubMed PMID:38057390 PubMed Central PMC10700563
5. Zhang, M, Lu, J, Hallman, WK. Sharing on Facebook and Face-to-Face What Others Do or Approve: Word-of-Mouth Driven by Social Norms. Front Psychol. 2021;12 :712253. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.712253. PubMed PMID:34671296 PubMed Central PMC8521032
6. Zhang, M, Zhang, Y, Hallman, WK, Williams, JD. Eating green for health or social benefits? Interactions of attitudes with self-identity on the consumption of vegetarian meals among U.S. and Chinese college students. Appetite. 2021;167 :105652. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2021.105652. PubMed PMID:34418504
7. Hallman, WK, Hallman, WK 2nd. A comparison of cell-based and cell-cultured as appropriate common or usual names to label products made from the cells of fish. J Food Sci. 2021;86 (9):3798-3809. doi: 10.1111/1750-3841.15860. PubMed PMID:34337762 PubMed Central PMC8518778
8. Briggs, T, Quick, V, Hallman, WK. Feature Availability Comparison in Free and Paid Versions of Popular Smartphone Weight Management Applications. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2021;53 (9):732-741. doi: 10.1016/j.jneb.2021.05.010. PubMed PMID:34315678
9. Tallapragada, M, Hardy, BW, Lybrand, E, Hallman, WK. Impact of Abstract Versus Concrete Conceptualization of Genetic Modification (GM) Technology on Public Perceptions. Risk Anal. 2021;41 (6):976-991. doi: 10.1111/risa.13591. PubMed PMID:32984992
10. Hallman, WK, Hallman, WK 2nd. An empirical assessment of common or usual names to label cell-based seafood products. J Food Sci. 2020;85 (8):2267-2277. doi: 10.1111/1750-3841.15351. PubMed PMID:32691419 PubMed Central PMC7496225