My research group at the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) focuses on addressing microbial animal food safety issues in support of CVM’s regulatory mission. Specifically, we work on developing rapid, reliable, and robust pathogen detection methods in animal food, characterizing phenotypic and genotypic traits of foodborne pathogens and indicator organisms in animal food, evaluating mitigation strategies for pathogen control in animal food, and investigating mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance in foodborne bacteria. Our research employs traditional microbiological and molecular methods and newer genomic and metagenomics tools.