Frank Yiannas Joins Wiliot as a Strategic Advisor

Wiliot, the Internet of Things pioneer whose visibility platform is enabling trillions of “things” to gain intelligence, announced that Frank Yiannas, the former deputy commissioner of Food Policy & Response of the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), has joined the company as a strategic advisor.

With his appointment, Yiannas will help advise the food and retail markets on the ways in which the ambient IoT, and the real-time, item-level visibility it delivers, can help meet the FSMA Rule 204 obligation that requires the safe tracking of food products and the sharing of traceability data with the FDA and consumers.

“The FDA’s New Food Traceability Rule has become a catalyst for retailers to modernize their supply chains,” said Wiliot CEO Tal Tamir. “Frank’s leadership in food safety and response will be pivotal in helping us educate the market on how this moment and the adoption of ambient IoT by some of the world’s largest retailers can enable the food business to meet their societal and regulatory traceability requirements.

“The Wiliot Visibility Platform provides food retailers with a real-time view into each product throughout its journey from farm-to-store,” added Tamir. “Frank has a unique understanding of how that will transform the food industry – reducing waste, extending shelf life, improving quality, and optimizing labor – while helping retailers maintain FSMA 204 compliance and its mandate for accuracy.”

Ambient IoT is a battery-free wireless technology that is being incorporated in multiple wireless standards, such as Bluetooth, 5G Advanced, 6G, and Wi-Fi – allowing food, medicine, and clothing to be connected to the internet and the power of AI at a fraction of the cost of legacy technologies.

“Modernizing food safety is critical to the health and wellbeing of people everywhere,” Yiannas said. “This goal cannot be achieved without creating greater transparency and traceability throughout the entire food continuum – across farms, food processing and distribution centers, and retail stores. Wiliot, through its pioneering use of ambient IoT, is in a unique position to enable this transparency to become a reality faster and more efficiently than others. They have demonstrated that their Visibility Platform – using battery-free postage stamp-sized IoT Pixels – is a game-changer that can significantly help the entire food industry create safer, more traceable supply chains.”

Yiannas is a food safety leader and executive, food system futurist, author, professor, and past president of the International Association of Food Protection. In addition to serving under two different administrations as the Deputy Commissioner for Food Policy and Response at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a position he held from 2018 to 2023, he previously spent 30 years in leadership roles with two industry giants: Walmart and the Walt Disney Company.

Wiliot is already working with some of the world’s largest food retailers and companies on ambient IoT projects that ensure FSMA Rule 204 compliance, an initiative that will now be accelerated by Yiannas’ appointment.