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Five undergraduate students with specific interests in food safety participating in the 2011 Cornell Summer Undergraduate Research Program, including one undergraduate student each from North Carolina A&T State University, Purdue University, UC Berkely, MIT, and Cornell.

Fritz Foo, an undergraduate majoring in Molecular Environmental Biology at UC Berkley, was a summer scholar in the Wiedmann lab at Cornell. His research focused on molecular and phenotypic characterization of Salmoenlla Enteritidis isolates obtained from human disesae outbreaks and cases, with a focus on comparing growth trends and PFGE profiles.

Carmen Wickware, an undergraduate majoring in Food Science at Purdue University, was a summer scholar in the Worobo lab at Cornell. Her research focused on charactziation of Alicylobacillus isolates and their behaviour in juice and other beverages.

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Jessica Wooten, an undergraduate majoring in Food and Nutritional Sciences at NC A&T State University, was a summer scholar in the Wiedmann lab at Cornell. Her research focused on phylogenetic analysis of shiga-toxin producing E. coli isolates from beef cattle farms and natural environments.  Shiga Toxin-Producing E. coli are bacterial pathogens that result in both outbreak and sporadic occurrences of human mortality and disease.  Shiga Toxin-Producing E. coli can cause hemorrhagic colitis and the life threatening hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS) in humans.  E. coli 0157:H7 has been recognized as a major cause of hemorrhagic colitis and HUS but many non-O157 STEC can also cause these illnesses.  My project goals were 1) to examine STEC from beef cattle pastures and pristine environments to find differences in genes that could show how they are related; 2) to analyze soil and water from these environments to determine if they are reservoirs for E. coli; 3) to examine if genes are moving between environments.

Jean Fang, an undergraduate majoring in Chemical-Biological Engineering at MIT, was a summer scholar in the Moraru lab at Cornell. Her research focused on the effects of nanoscale surface topography on the attachment behavior of Listeria innocua to alumina and silica substrates.

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Brittany Miller, an undergraduate majoring in Food Science at Cornell, was a summer scholar in the Moraru lab at Cornell. Her research focused on inactivation of E. coli in milk and concentrated milk using Pulsed light treatment.