Faculty and Academic Staff

Expertise:  Food Chemistry and Ingredient Technology

Expertise: Sensory perception; olfaction
 

Expertise: Fruit and vegetable microbial safety; Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs); Produce safety training; Curriculum development; FSMA Produce Safety Rule

Expertise: Microbial ecology; fermentation biology; wine microbiology

Expertise: Dairy chemistry and dairy product processing
Faculty Research Interests: Mid-Infrared milk analysis; ultrafiltration and microfiltration of milk and whey

Expertise: Microbiology; protein engineering; cancer therapeutics

Expertise: enology, wine production, sensory science

Expertise: Fruit and vegetable microbial safety; Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs); Produce safety training; Curriculum development; FSMA Produce Safety Rule; Focus group facilitation

Expertise: Molecular microbiology of foodborne pathogens and spoilage microbes; Bacterial gene regulation; Transcriptional regulatory networks; Dairy food microbiology; Food processing microbiology

Expertise: Computer modeling of carbohydrates; neutron diffraction with isotopic substitution; food chemistry

Expertise: Taste, Sensory Evaluation
Research Interests: Sensory physiology, psychophysics, obesity, metabolism

Expertise: Production of fermented and distilled beverages
Research Interests: Optimizing fermentation quality/ efficiency through applied projects 

Expertise: molecular and cellular biology; microbiology; genetics; systems biology; yeast biology

Expertise: Factors and practices that influence the intestinal absorption of trace minerals, specifically iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn) micronutrients

Expertise:  Biomaterials and Biointerfaces in Food and Agriculture
Research Interests:  Biomimetic polymer synthesis, active packaging materials, biocatalytic materials, antimicrobial and nonfouling coatings, polymer surface modification

Expertise: Fruit and vegetable microbial safety; Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs); Produce safety training; Curriculum development; FSMA Produce Safety Rule

Expertise: Biochemistry of fruits and vegetables
Research Interests: Nutraceutical functions of phytochemicals; Sensory/nutritional qualities of fruit and vegetable products

Expertise: Food analysis; food lipids; functional foods; nutraceuticals
Research Interests: Diet and cancer; effect of functional foods/nutraceuticals on chronic disease risks; and bioactive compounds in natural products and herbal remedies for anticancer and antiviral activity

Expertise: Wine production methods; sensory evaluation; cold climate and hybrid wine production
Research Interests: Yeast Assimilable Nitrogen; phenolic extraction and retention in red hybrid wines; bitterness in aromatic white wines; defining regional typicity

Expertise: Iron bioavailability; iron fortification of foods; impact of food systems on human nutrition

Expertise: Physical and engineering properties of foods; food/dairy processing;  food safety engineering
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Expertise: Chemical food safety; toxicology; food contamination
Research Interests: Endocrine disrupting compounds in food; environmental and reproductive toxicology

Expertise: Rapid detection of pathogens; biosensors; lateral flow assays; bacteriophages; sample preparation
 
Research Interests: Using genetic engineering, synthetic biology, and nanotechnological approaches to design tools for the rapid separation, concentration, and detection of bacteria from complex matrices.
 

Expertise: Safety and stability of plant-based foods; formulation and processing of acid; acidified and water activity controlled-foods; juice technology; food entrepreneurship
Research Interests: Identification of key factors that affect the safety and quality of specialty foods produced by small-scale processors. Development  and evaluation of processing systems that result in safe; high quality; plant-based food products. Methods to enhance the economic viability of agricultural producers that manufacture value-added plant-based foods

Expertise: Fruit and vegetable microbial safety; Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs); Produce safety training; Curriculum development; FSMA Produce Safety Rule

Expertise: Artisan/specialty cheese production; microbiological problem solving in dairy plants; milk quality improvement; food safety; food defense program development

Expertise: Food processing engineering; supercritical fluids; extrusion; engineering properties of food and related biomaterials

Expertise: Flavor chemistry; wine and grape chemistry; Chromatography and mass spectrometry
​Research Interests: Our lab studies how pre- and post-harvest factors affect the organoleptic properties (flavor; color) of agricultural products; including wines and juices. In addition to using a range of modern analytical equipment; such as GCxGC-TOF-MS; we also interested in developing simple field-appropriate tests for food quality parameters.  ​

The goal of my research is to develop practical solutions to ongoing challenges in microbial food safety and spoilage. This work requires an enhanced understanding of incidence, harborage, transfer, resistance to removal, and tolerance to inactivation in order to develop risk-based interventions. 
 

Expertise: Fruit and vegetable microbial safety; Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs); Produce safety training; Curriculum development; FSMA Produce Safety Rule

Expertise: Nutrigenomics; intestinal physiology; mineral intestinal absorption; iron and zinc bioavailabilty
Research Interests: Mineral bioavailabilty in standard and fortified food crops; iron and zinc intestinal absorption

Expertise: Fruit and vegetable microbial safety; Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs); Produce safety training; Curriculum development; FSMA Produce Safety Rule

Expertise: Food safety; food microbiology; dairy microbiology; molecular biology; genomics; molecular subtyping; full genome sequencing
Research Interests: Farm to table transmission and ecology of foodborne pathogens and spoilage organisms; Listeria monocytogenes; Salmonella; genomics and molecular biology of food associated microbes

Expertise: Food safety; food microbiology; fruit and vegetable safety
Research Interests: Enhancing the safety of fruits and vegetables throughout the produce supply chain