Graduate Programs in the Life Sciences

The increasingly competitive nature of the food and beverage market highlights the need for improvement of dairy product quality, variety, and availability to ensure the economic vitality of the dairy industry. To work toward meeting these challenges, Kathryn Boor has established an integrated research and extension program in dairy microbiology quality and safety which is dedicated to improving dairy product shelf-life, wholesomeness and safety through reduction of spoilage and pathogenic bacteria in processed products and in raw milk. The long-term objective of this program is the creation of an integrated and interactive University/regulatory agency/dairy industry network to protect dairy product safety and quality. The specific foci of her research program are to identify and characterize factors that affect the presence and persistence of spoilage and pathogenic organisms in food products intended for human consumption. Her strategies integrate the tools of molecular biology and phenotypic microbiology to: (i) explore factors linking the ability of bacteria to survive under various conditions, including in foods and in food processing environments, with bacterial ability to cause human and animal disease; and (ii) rapidly identify and track spoilage and pathogenic bacteria in food systems. Her program targets the long-term food quality and safety needs of the food and dairy processing industries and facilitates rapid translation and communication of research results to these industries. The major impacts from these programs will be (i) continued discovery and application of new information for production of high quality, wholesome dairy and food products; (ii) an improved understanding of the cellular mechanisms contributing to bacterial survival under widely varying environmental conditions; and (iii) training of highly qualified students for employment in dairy- and food-related sectors of industry, government, and academia.