Dr. Abigail Snyder’s research focuses on microbial food safety and quality. She studies how the physical and spatial attributes of food processing environments influence the formation of microbial communities on those environmental surfaces, and make it easier or more difficult to manage that environmental microbiota. Abby’s lab aims to answer many fundamental questions that are important to the control of cross-contamination through elimination of harborage sites and prevention of their formation. They are also interested in how microbial genomics influences spoilage potential, and environmental persistence. The goal of Abby’s 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 among pathogens and spoilage microbes in order to develop risk-based interventions. Ultimately, this leads to the development of better tools for application, monitoring, and verification of critical food safety programs.
So far, Abby has participated in PACE’s summer workshop on grant development, and the close reading involved in these sessions has really helped her develop her proposal.