Manhattan ? Kansas State University has hired an internationally known pharmacology expert to direct a center at the university involved with improving animal health and food safety.

Jim Riviere, director of the Center for Chemical Toxicology Research and Pharmacokinetics at North Carolina State University, starts at Kansas State on Aug. 1. His annual salary is $260,000.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that Riviere is the first member of the National Academy of Sciences to join the Kansas State faculty. He’ll be a distinguished professor in the Department of Anatomy and Physiology in the university’s College of Veterinary Medicine. He will also direct the Institute of Computational Comparable Medicine, which applies mathematical models to improve animal health and food safety.

Kansas State also has hired Riviere’s wife, Nancy Monteiro-Riviere, a leading nanotoxicologist.