Dr. Sarah Beno, Assistant Professor of Biology at Birmingham-Southern College uses her food science background to encourage current students to consider food industry careers.
Name: Sarah Beno
Title: Assistant Professor of Biology, Birmingham-Southern College
What is your background and how did you become interested in the dairy/food industry?
I earned my bachelors degrees in biology and chemistry from Meredith College. During undergrad, I took a food science course through North Carolina State University and became really interested in applied microbiology, specifically food safety and I decided to apply for PhD programs in this area, as I knew I ultimately wanted to be a professor.
What was your Cornell experience like? (i.e. coursework, dairy related activities, internships, jobs, etc.)
At Cornell, I studied food safety and dairy microbiology in Martin Wiedmann’s lab. My PhD was in Food Science and my minors were Microbiology and Applied Economics and Management. My elective courses were largely focused on international development. I had a fellowship that allowed me to explore global food safety, and I spent a few weeks in India, a few weeks in Sweden, and a few months in Kenya learning, collaborating, and working with different industries. While on campus, I was very active in dairy extension. I attended many of the dairy extension program workshops, helped plan and execute the artisan dairy workshop, and taught “hands on microbiology” for the basic dairy science workshop. In addition, I gave talks to dairy processing superintendents in conjunction with NYS Agriculture and Markets. The experiences that I had working with dairy extension, as well as my time as a teaching assistant solidified my career goal to work as a teaching-focused professor.
What is your current role in the food industry, and how does it impact the dairy industry?
When I left Cornell I started a postdoc at University of Alabama at Birmingham. I spent the first two years working in host-microbe interactions, specifically looking at the impact of Streptococcus pneumoniae on heart function. I’ve spent the past year studying the impact of feedback on undergraduate student learning. While I’ve been away from the food industry, I have jumped on any opportunity to give lectures on food-related topics and I developed a course for the Honors College last fall to teach “hot topics” in food and nutrition. I will be teaching this course for Health Science majors at Birmingham-Southern College in the fall (in addition to Genetics). While I do not have any direct ties to the food industry, I plan to collaborate with my Cornell network for some small side-projects that I can complete with undergraduates in my research lab.
How did your Cornell training impact your career in the dairy/food industry?
I am going to be working with undergraduate students who often have not heard of this field. I intend to encourage my students to consider careers in this field and with the network I built at Cornell, I have many resources to connect students to these opportunities!
