Aim 3 - Develop a undergraduate summer research program in food safety

The Cornell Food Science Summer Scholars Program is scheduled to start in 2012 (i.e., project year 2). However, activities have been initiated at different participating institutions in 2011. Undergraduate students interested in conducting summer research in food safety in the summer of 2012 should contact Dr. Martin Wiedmann <mw16@cornell.edu> for further information or should check the WWW page for the Cornell Food Science Summer Scholars Program for details on how to apply to this summer program.

At North Carolina A&T SU, our food microbiology and safety laboratory is currently hosting one undergraduate research assistant to conduct research related to lactic acid fermentation using agricultural by-products as growth medium for the production of functional ingredients.   

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.

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.

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.

Alani Adkins, an undergraduate majoring in Food Nutritional Sciences at NC A&T State University, was a summer scholar in the Ibrahim lab. Her research focused on the use lactic acid bacteria to control the growth of E. sakazakii and E. coli O157:H7.

Marcella Dyanne Cheek, an undergraduate majoring in Food and Nutritional Sciences at NC A&T State University, was a summer scholar in the Ibrahim lab. Her research is related to development of educational materials in the area of food defense and protection.

Three undergraduate students, majoring in Biology, participated in a pilot, five-week Food Safety Summer Scholars Program at Texas Wesleyan University during the summer of 2011.  The students worked under the mentorship of Dr. Angela Roberts.

Rebecca Mandujano, a senior Biology major, studied how effectively a recipe for homemade queso fresco kills Listeria monocytogenes during cheese preparation.

Truc Nguyen, a senior Biology major, used site-directed mutagenesis to probe the contribution of a premature stop codon in the flaR gene of Listeria monocytogenes on flagellar motility.

Lorena Ortiz, a senior Biology major, used cell culture to compare the intracellular growth rates of strains of Listeria monocytogenes isolated from human clinical cases of listeriosis.