Latest News

Congratulations to Xiaoqing (Ellie) Tan, M.S. student in Food Science, for her 1st place finish in The Penn State Microbiome Center Annual Networking Event poster competition held on October 2, 2018 in the Life Sciences Bridge.

Taejung Chung presented his research at the ASM Conference on Rapid Applied Microbial Next-Generation Sequencing and Bioinformatic Pipelines held on September 23–26, 2018 in the Washington DC area.

After two fruitful months of independent research at Penn State Department of Food Science through USDA-funded REEU project "Bugs in my food", Hephzibah Nwanosike and Marysabel Mendez Acevedo shared some of their impressions and experiences.

Presenting our past and ongoing work in a talk "Applying whole-genome sequencing to illuminate dairy sporeformers" on Tuesday June 26 at ADSA 2018 | https://www.adsa.org/2018/. Thanks to the organizing committee for a kind invitation!

Our lab members Emma Mills and Xiaoxuan (Meg) Shi received Penn State College of Ag Sciences Undergraduate Research Awards for their research proposals. Congratulations!

Beginning of June Penn State Department of Food Science welcomed 13 Bugs in my Food (BIMG) Undergraduate Fellows that joined faculty labs to train their laboratory and science communication skills in the context of food microbiology.

When spring refuses to come to State College, we go after it across the Atlantic.

Undergraduate lab members Sarah Koay, Caitlin Luyster and Thomas Pastor presented their research on cocoa safety and antimicrobial resistance at the Gamma Sigma Delta Research Expo at Penn State on March 27th.

Congratulations to undergraduate lab member Xiaoxuan (Meg) Shi for being accepted for the CONSERVE Summer Internship Program!

Centre county middle school girls visited Kovac lab to explore yogurt-fermenting microbes an learn about food microbiology.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Faculty in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences are spearheading an initiative that will provide selected doctoral students with the opportunity for extensive study in the emerging field of agricultural microbiome research.

Wild and Tamed Phytobiomes | June 19 - 22, 2017

We are excited to congratulate Caitlin Luyster and Sarah Koay for their proposals being selected to receive a College of Agricultural Sciences Undergraduate Research Award for Spring 2018.

The Food Microbiology Short course provides insight into the most recent developments in areas related to food-borne pathogens, toxins, and contaminants that may occur in a food plant environment.

Come learn about our lab's research at the PSU Microbiome Center seminar on December 8th at 11 am in W203 Millennium Science Complex

Our proposal “Graduate Training in the Exploration and Manipulation of Agricultural Microbiomes for Food Productivity, Quality, Safety, and Human Health (mBiome)” has been selected for funding in the Penn State Strategic Networks and Initiatives Program – Interdisciplinary Graduate Assistantships

We are hosting a Food Science seminar speaker Dr. David Baumler from University of Minnesota on November 16th

Attending Dr. David Sue's seminar talk at Cornell University

Dr. Kovac is giving a talk on Campylobacter antimicrobial reistance at the Penn State Antimicrobial Resistance Symposium on October 28, 2017.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Darrell Cockburn and Jasna Kovac recently joined Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences as assistant professors in the Department of Food Science.