Guests and Collaborators

Phil Brown

Trumansburg Kindergarten 
​At an early age, Phil was able to master the difficult techniques of pipetting properly through our lab. His dexterity in the use of pipettes is comparable to anyone in the lab.  His first scientific manuscript is entitled "What Makes a Duck-billed Platypus a Mammal?".

Jim Bruce

Du Pont Qualicon
Jim is a long-term collaborator and regular visitor to the Food safety and Food Microbiology laboratories at Cornell. He has been collaborating with Martin Wiedmann and Kathryn Boor for many years on the development and application of molecular subtyping methods for Listeria monocytogenes.

Mark Carter

Silliker, Inc.
General Manager of Food Science Center
Mark Carter visited the Department of Food Science and with the Food Safety Lab on April 5-6, 2006. He gave a presentation on his work with Silliker Laboratories' Food Science Center.

Atin Datta

Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, FDA, MD
atin.datta [at] fda.hhs.gov (atin[dot]datta[at]fda[dot]hhs[dot]gov)
Atin is collaborating with Dr. Martin Wiedmann and the Food Safety Research Laboratory on projects related to Listeria’s ability to survive and grow at cold temperature. Atin visited the Boor/Wiedmann laboratory for two weeks in October 2008 and worked on construction of in-frame deletion mutants in Listeria monocytogenes.​

Andy DePaola

FDA Seafood Laboratories, Dauphin Island, AL.
​Andy is collaborating with Dr. Kathryn Boor and the Food Safety Laboratory on the development of detection and subtyping methods for pathogenic Vibrio parahaemolyticus subtypes. He has visited the lab for a couple of days in June 2000 to discuss collaborative projects and to learn more about trout and salmon fishing in the Finger lakes.

Conor O'Byrne

University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Conor visited the Boor and Wiedmann research groups for a couple days in July 2000. His research interests focus on stress in foodborne pathogens, particularly E. coli 0157:H7 and Listeria monocytogeneswith a focus on sigma B dependent stress response mechanisms.

Rob Reinhard

Sara Lee Foods
Rob visited the lab and the department on September 29th and 30th.  

Jim Seward

New York State Senator
New York State Senator Jim Seward visited the Department of Food Science and with the Food Safety Lab, the Boor lab, and the Wiedmann lab on October 19 to learn more about on-going food safety and quality research in our laboratories.

Greg Siragusa

Agricultural Research Service, USDA, Russell Research Center, Athens, GA
Greg Siragusa visited on November 18 and 19 of 2001, and is a collaborator on a planned project on studying the role of sigB in Listeria monocytogenes gene expression during animal infection.

Gaoyan Wang

Guest Ph.D. Student
Cornell University
Gaoyan is a guest Ph.D. student from Randy Worobo's research lab and is doing research on transposon mutagenesis and gene regulation of a novel antifungal protein.

Bradley Ziebell

Associate Microbiologist
Conagra Foods, Omaha, Nebraska
Bradley visited on April 4-7, 2011 to be hands-on trained in PFGE & BioNumerics. He was here to be trained in the technique in hopes to start up PFGE-typing in his own research lab at Conagra Foods.

China Agriculture and Dairy Delegation

Delegation of agricultural science and technology educators/scientists/government officials from Heilongjiang Province, China, visited the Food Science Department and the Hardie Dairy Farm with Martin and Silin.

4H- Teens Program

A group of about 13 High School students from New York State visited Martin's laboratory from June 26 to June 28, 2000 to learn about the application of molecular biology techniques such as PCR for DNA fingerprinting of Listeria monocytogenes and for the detection of human foodborne disease outbreaks.

2000 New York State Dairy Princesses

A group of 2000 New York state Dairy Princesses visited with Dr. Boor and others in the Department of Food Science on October 9, 2000 to learn more about dairy food products.

Jim Bruce

Du Pont Qualicon
Jim was a long-term collaborator and regular visitor to the Food safety and Food Microbiology laboratories at Cornell. He collaborated with Martin Wiedmann and Kathryn Boor for many years on the development and application of molecular subtyping methods for Listeria monocytogenes.​

Andy DePaola

FDA Seafood Laboratories, Dauphin Island, AL
​Andy was collaborating with Dr. Kathryn Boor and the Food Safety Laboratory on the development of detection and subtyping methods for pathogenic Vibrio parahaemolyticus subtypes. He visited the lab for a couple days in June 2000 to discuss collaborative projects and to learn more about trout and salmon fishing in the Finger lakes.

Nellie Dumas, Bill Wolfgang

New York State Department of Health
Nellie Dumas, Bill Wolfgang (and previously Dale Morse, now at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and their colleagues at the New York State Department of Health have been collaborators since 1997 on projects investigating the application of molecular subtyping methods for understanding the clonal structure and virulence differences in Listeria monocytogenes. These collaborations have also contributed to the detection of human listeriosis outbreaks.​

Jeannette Fong

Graduate Student, Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering
​B.S., Bioengineering, 2001 -- Cornell University, Ithaca, NY M.Eng.,
Bioengineering, 2002 -- Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
The goals of Jeannette's research projects were 1) to design and develop the detection mechanism for a hand-held cell-based biosensor for pathogenic Vibrio parahaemolyticus, 2) to determine electrophysiolgy of host cells upon interaction with V. parahemolyticus enterotoxin, and 3) examine the possibilities of culturing cells in suspension. She was also working with the patch-clamp technique to determine membrane potential changes in host cells upon infection.

Ken Gall

Seafood Specialist
New York SeaGrant Extension Program
SUNY at Stony Brook
Ken collaborated with the Wiedmann and Boor labs on a variety of seafood safety projects starting in 1997, including projects on understanding and controlling Listeria monocytogenes transmission in seafoods and projects ion the development and application of new detection methods for Vibrio parahaemolyticus.  More than 6 years of collaborative research data on L. moncytogenes transmission in Ready-To-Eat seafood processing plants have not only provided broad insight on the ecology and transmission of L. monocytogenes in food processing environments, but have also helped many food processing plants to better control this foodborne pathogen.

Laura Goodman

Animal Health and Diagnostic Center, Cornell University
Laura is collaborating with us in developing Whole Genome Sequencing techniques and applications for zoonotic and foodborne pathogens.

Yrjö  Gröhn

Cornell University, Section of Epidemiology
Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences
​Yrjö  is a key collaborator on many projects in the Food Safety Lab and Milk Quality Improvement Program.  Past projects have included the NIH-funded  "L. monocytogenes clonal groups: Ecology and transmission" grant.  His interests lie in the application of statistical modeling approaches to understanding the nature and distribution of diseases affecting both animals and humans.

Renata Ivanek Miojevic

Cornell University, Section of Epidemiology
Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Science
Renata is collaborating with us on various statistical modeling projects, especially to develop strategies for environmental sampling in food processing facilities.

Laura Kornstein

​New York City Department of Health
​Laura Kornstein has worked with our laboratory since 1998 to study the diversity of Listeria subtypes among residents of New York City.  Laura's research interests are focused on the application of novel molecular methods for the detection,  culture, and genetic characterization of foodborne pathogens.

Kurt Mangione, Claudette Farchion

New York State Department of Agriculture & Markets
Kurt, Claudette, and Jon Schermerhorn (now retired!) collaborated with the Food Safety Laboratory by providing isolates of Listeria monocytogenes from foods sampled from retail shelves and from consumer complaints which are then subtyped by ribotyping and PCR-RFLP.  This project established long-term strain diversity data for foods distributed in New York state and across the United States.

Peggy Melton, Yuelian Shen

Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services
Peggy and Yuelian provided isolates of Listeria monocytogenes obtained from foods sampled at retail and consumer complaints in Florida.  These data  provided an interesting perspective on the strain diversity of Listeria monocytogenes in foods distributed in Florida and across the United States.

Rasmus Nielsen

Assistant Professor
Statistical Genomics
Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology
Cornell University
Rasmus collaborated on many of the evolutionary analyses done on the virulence and housekeeping genes of Listeria monocytogenes. His main research interests were based on making inferences regarding function and evolution from molecular and genetic data.

Bradley L. Njaa, DVM, MVSc, DACVP

Department of Biomedical Sciences
Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Science
College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University
Brad collaborated with our research group on the development of new animal models to probe the virulence characteristics and strain specific virulence differences in Listeria monocytogenes.

Conor O'Byrne

University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Conor visited the Boor and Wiedmann research groups for a couple days in July 2000. His research interests focus on stress in foodborne pathogens, particularly E. coli 0157:H7 and Listeria monocytogenes with a focus on sigma B-dependent stress response mechanisms.

Ynte Schukken

Cornell University, Quality Milk Promotion Services
​Ynte was interested in understanding population dynamics of infectious diseases in animal populations. His research focus was on the application of epidemiological, statistical, and mathematical methods to animal disease research and he was a key collaborator on many projects in our laboratory including the Listeria and Group B Strep projects.

Seafood Listeria Research Group

The Seafood Listeria Research Group was funded through a USDA Food Safety Initiative Grant to develop improved control strategies for Listeria contamination in ready-to-eat food processing environments.

Malinda Reynolds

Graduate Student, Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering
B.S., Biological and Environmental Engineering, 2001, Cornell University
Malinda's research project entailed designing a cell-based, portable biosensor for pathnogenic Vibrio parahaemolyticus. She was evaluating sample filtration techniques, designing a scheme for analyzing the sample, and investigating growth of HeLa cells on silicon substrates.
E-mail: mar39 [at] cornell.edu (mar39[at]cornell[dot]edu)  

Qi Sun

Senior Research Associate

Computational Biology Service Unit

Cornell University
Qi played a fundamental role in the development of Pathogen Tracker 2.0. His expertise in programming and biology continues to facilitate the implementation of new features and general enhancements to this bacterial database.