Zhen Jia
Dr. Jia's research focuses on food microbiology. The goal of the research is to build a smart and resilient food supply chain as well as to develop innovative strategies to address microbial food safety issues through the use of cutting-edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence, and machine learning. The general themes of the study are 1) to develop robust mathematical models for predicting and describing bacteria behavior responding to various environmental conditions (e. g. temperature, water activity, and food additives); 2) to develop a smart and nondestructive foodborne pathogen detection approaches for real-time monitoring the whole food supply chain. Dr. Jia's research involves various foodborne pathogens, including Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, and E. coli O157:H7.