Tackling food safety challenges: from fundamentals to applications
Special presentation by Dr. Xiaonan Lu, University of British Columbia. Everyone is welcome to attend
Food safety is a leading global public health concern. Both microbial and chemical hazards can significantly impact our agri-food systems as well as consumer health. Recent research advances in Dr. Xiaonan Lu’s laboratory on Campylobacter, the microbe that causes the largest number of cases of bacterial gastroenteritis worldwide will be discussed including: 1) biofilm, 2) dormancy (viable-but-non-culturable state and persisters), 3) control of Campylobacter in the food supply chain, and 4) detection and sequencing. A brief introduction to his work in analytical chemistry for rapid detection of food contaminations including assay systems (strip, immunoassay, and microfluidic “lab-on-a-chip”) will be presented. His concepts for future research works to be conducted at McGill University on Campylobacter pathogenesis, human “organoid-on-a-chip” platform for gut health research, “smarter” food safety systems using machine learning and the Internet of Things, as well as his plans for food safety outreach to the food producers and the broader community will be presented.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr. Lu received his B.Sc. (Food Science) from Ocean University of China in 2007 and Ph.D. (Food Science) from Washington State University in 2011. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University before he joined the University of British Columbia (UBC) Food Science program in January 2013 as the principal investigator of the UBC Food Safety & Health Engineering Laboratory. He is the recipient of UBC Peter Wall Scholar (2017), Larry Beuchat Young Researcher Award from International Association for Food Protection (2017), Young Scientist Excellence Award from International Union of Food Science and Technology (2015), and currently serves as the editorial board member of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Journal of Food Science, Food and Agricultural Immunology etc. He is the author of over 100 scientific papers as well as one book and several book chapters. His H-index is 29 along with >2,400 citations. During the past 6 years at UBC he secured over CAD $5.2 M research funding from National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Canada Foundation for Innovation, Genome Canada, Mitacs, etc. as well as supervised 2 Research Associates, 11 Postdoctoral Fellows, 10 PhD students, and 11 MSc students.