Our team specializes in pathogen detection, microbial ecology, and bacterial stress response, with the interest of understanding how bacteria survive and adapt in food processing environments.
We study the mechanisms used by foodborne pathogens to persist in food production facilities (e.g. biofilm formation) and explore novel strategies to control them.
Recently, we have conducted research focused on the use of direct-fed microbials for pathogen control in pre-harvest environments, challenge studies to evaluate and improve current pathogen control strategies used by the cheese industry, the isolation and characterization of S. aureus strains associated with outbreaks in a dairy farm and the assessment of differences between Salmonella serovars response to different pre and post harvest antimicrobial interventions commonly used in food processing environments, among others.
