IAFP Announces 2024 Student Travel Scholarship Recipients

Thursday, April 25, 2024

The International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) will present Student Travel Scholarships to the following individuals at IAFP 2024, July 14–17, in Long Beach, California, USA. Sponsored by the IAFP Foundation, the Student Travel Scholarships provide travel funds to enable selected students to travel to and participate in IAFP 2024.

Samantha Bolten will receive her Ph.D. in May 2024 in Food Science and Technology from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Ms. Bolten’s research primarily focuses on investigating strategies to improve Listeria control in dairy and fresh produce supply chains. In addition to research, Ms. Bolten has worked with more than 20 food production facilities during her time at Cornell, where she has helped facility personnel develop, implement, revise, and validate their environmental monitoring programs. 

Tyler Chandross-Cohen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Food Science at The Pennsylvania State University in State College. Mr. Chandross-Cohen joined Dr. Jasna Kovac’s lab in the Department of Food Science and began studying the interaction between the foodborne pathogen Listeria monocytotogenes and lactic acid bacteria in dairy environments. As he continued in the lab, he further studied the foodborne pathogen Bacillus cereus and focused his research on better understanding and predicting the virulence potential of B. cereus by utilizing genotypic and phenotypic data.

Farid Dewan is a Ph.D. student at Bangladesh Agricultural University and is in the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Safety (FSIL), managed by Purdue University and Cornell University. Mr. Dewan’s research focuses on two main aspects: assessing fish value chain actors’ existing knowledge, attitude, and practices (KAP), developing need-based training modules, and suggesting the intervention arena for policymakers; and eliciting how much premium the consumers are willing to pay (WTP) for safer fish produced following Good Aquaculture Practices (GAP) than the conventional wet market fish through experimental auction approach.

Jakob Gryniewski is an undergraduate student in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Madison. One of Mr. Gryniewski’s primary projects explores the antimicrobial compounds produced in coffee extracts as alternative, clean-label antimicrobials. He continues to examine the relationship between the coffee extracts against vegetative pathogens to evaluate the antimicrobial effects against spore-forming bacteria, namely C. botulinum. After graduation, he intends to remain at the Applied Food Safety Laboratory while working on his current research.

Tahirah Johnson is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne. Ms. Johnson is collaborating with Dr. Salina Parveen on her dissertation project titled “Prevalence, Antibiotic Resistance, Whole Genome Sequencing and Control of Shewanella spp. in Oysters (Crassostrea virginica) and Seawater collected from the Mid-Atlantic Region.”

Harsimran Kaur Kapoor is a Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Abhinav Mishra’s laboratory at the University of Georgia in Athens. A native of India, Ms. Kapoor’s research focuses on ‘Modeling the fate of enteric pathogens during production and storage of fresh produce.’ She specifically aims to address some of the research gaps during preharvest and postharvest environments by moving along the path of prediction of dependence of bacterial lag phase duration, modeling the effect of pre-inoculation temperature history on regrowth lag time of bacteria in the leafy greens.

Sushant Kaushal is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Agriculture and International Cooperation (DTAIC) at the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Pingtung, Taiwan. Mr. Kaushal’s current research is focused on cutting-edge research that uses an AI-powered electronic nose device coupled with machine learning methods to address the issue of geographical discrimination in oolong tea. Mr. Kaushal is determined to identify various volatile compounds responsible for individual aromas, which will help to differentiate between fake and genuine oolong tea.

Hyeon-Jin Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in Veterinary Medicine at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea. Ms. Kim’s recent research focuses on developing natural antimicrobial agents to combat various pathogens in food and animal environments. This led her to advance the development of natural antibacterial agents derived from probiotics as an alternative to chemical antibiotics. Her ultimate goal is to create interdisciplinary solutions that resonate across various sectors of the food industry, ultimately benefiting both end consumers and industry stakeholders alike.

Shenmiao Li is a Ph.D. candidate in Food Science at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Ms. Li’s research highlights the public health risks posed by dormant bacteria, which exhibit high tolerance to both harsh environments and antibiotics. Utilizing advanced techniques like bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing, as well as machine learning, her project aims to elucidate the survival tactics of this foodborne pathogen in the agri-food system, which will identify potential targets for innovative control strategies.

Shpresa Musa is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Bioactive and Functional Food Chemistry at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. Ms. Musa’s current research is focused on the reduction of acrylamide content in cereal products via systematic use of asparaginases and antioxidants. Her focus lies in exploring various approaches to find the most cost-effective solutions for the industry while maintaining high-quality standards in the final product and achieving the highest level of safety for consumers.

Esther Oginni is an M.Sc. student in Sustainable Agriculture at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg. Ms. Oginni’s current research revolves around the use of the probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus and its metabolites to combat major foodborne pathogens. Her research interests span food safety, microbial interactions, sustainable agriculture practices, and the application of beneficial lactic acid bacteria to mitigate the risks of foodborne illnesses.

Carolina Ortiz-Murillo is an undergraduate student in Microbiology at the Facultad de Ciencias Biologicas of the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon in Monterrey, Mexico. Ms. Ortiz-Murillo is currently studying how low concentrations of ampicillin increase the virulence of E. coli O104:H4. She seeks to provide more information to understand the role of continuous antibiotic use in the food industry and how it affects the survival and virulence of pathogenic bacteria. Ultimately, she is interested in reducing the number of foodborne illnesses and providing information to properly treat these illnesses.

Abbey Pollok is a first-year master’s student and graduate research assistant in the Food Science and Technology Department at the University of Georgia in Athens. Some of Ms. Pollok’s undergraduate research projects include “Analysis of a Salmonella cocktail in Cumin Seeds after Electron Beam Irradiation Lethal Dosage Treatment,” with Dr. Suresh Pillai, and “Comparing Reductions in Salmonella enterica with Non-Pathogenic Salmonella Surrogates in a Fermented and Dried Sausage for In-Plant Safety Validation,” with Dr. Matthew Taylor. Her current master’s thesis project focuses on the potential bioindicators for foodborne pathogens in soil following poultry litter amendments.

Narindra Randriamiarintsoa is a Ph.D. student in Biosystems Engineering at Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing. Currently, Ms. Randriamiarintsoa’s doctoral research focuses on Salmonella inactivation modeling in fruit drying, such as apples, accounting for the simultaneous dynamic change of moisture and temperature of the product. Her goal is to estimate optimal parameters that would ensure sufficient pathogen control required by the FSMA Preventative Controls Rules.

Lily Saad is a senior undergraduate student pursuing dual degrees in Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in Amherst. Ms. Saad is currently working on a project with Dr. Matthew Moore that applies to environmental virology. Her research focuses on assessing the potential of Deep Eutectic Solvents (DESs) to capture and concentrate human Noroviruses, aiming to address the challenge of detecting viral contamination in food, which often occurs at minimal levels.

Jared Smith is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Georgia in Athens. Mr. Smith’s current research focuses on the transmission and diversity of Salmonella serovars within food production and the environment, including surface water, wild birds, produce, and cattle. The purpose of this research is to identify potential contamination points within production and external factors that increase or decrease the likelihood of Salmonella within these systems.

LaTaunya Tillman is a Ph.D. student in Dr. Michelle Danyluk’s laboratory at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Ms. Tillman’s research is focused on evaluating the cleaning and sanitizing procedures of leafy green harvest equipment. This work will help benefit the industry and growers by showing the efficacy of procedures and practices and continuing to improve best practices for managing harvest equipment for the leafy green industry.

Namratha Valsalan is a Ph.D. candidate at Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Faculty of Livestock Products Technology, in Kerala, India. Ms. Valsalan’s current research is on the meat quality of indigenous chicken reared under free-range system and developing innovative products from the meat. The study targets to shed light on sustainable meat production practices without compromising food quality, thereby helping traditional farmers and entrepreneurs to adopt better practices in raising and processing the chicken.

Tamara Walsky is a Ph.D. student in Food Science and Technology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Ms. Walsky’s research focuses on utilizing amplicon sequencing to chart how bacterial and fungal communities on baby spinach change over shelf life, bettering our understanding of how shifts in microbial populations over shelf life may drive spoilage. This data will inform the development of a model to better estimate shelf life of leafy greens.

So Young Woo is a Ph.D. candidate in the Food Toxicology Laboratory at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea. Ms. Woo’s current research focuses on the development of a preventive safety management method for aflatoxin contamination during the manufacturing of Korean traditional fermented soybean paste by introducing the “back-slopping” technique in a process in which the fermented soybean is susceptible to infection by aflatoxigenic fungi. This approach allows the non-aflatoxigenic fungal community to be well-adopted in the early stages of fermentation, thereby increasing fungal diversity, which was confirmed by high-throughput sequencing analysis. The developed reduction method could potentially reduce the health risks associated with aflatoxin exposures and the economic loss caused by aflatoxin contamination.

In addition, the Korea Association for Food Protection, IAFP's Affiliate, will support travel funding to IAFP 2024 for one student attending a university in Korea. This year's recipient is Unji Kim, a Ph.D. candidate in the Laboratory of Food Safety and Microbiology at Kookmin University in Seoul, South Korea. Ms. Kim’s current research focus is on the characterization of multi-species biofilm and rapid detection of foodborne pathogens. Specifically, she is investigating the bacterial interactions within the multi-species biofilm, the potential for antimicrobial resistance among multi-species biofilms, and the cross-contamination induced by multi-species biofilms.