What area best describes your area of work?
Feed/Food Production and Processing
What area best describes your area of work?
Feed/Food Production and Processing
What is the name of your employer/company/institution?
Queens university
What position do you hold?
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Where are you based?
Northern Ireland
Experience and expertise in food safety
I am working on the development of a faster, cheaper and sensitive detection method for identifying Campylobacter jejuniin <3 days, by generating novel C. jejuni-specific peptide binders with the ability to distinguish C. jejuni from other Campylobacter species using phage display and recombinant technologies. The phage display-derived binders will be used to develop and optimise a novel immunomagnetic separation method (IMS) for selective capture and concentration of C. jejuni enhancing its detection on farm and in poultry processing samples as well as patient stool samples. My early experience with Campylobacter include, an epidemiological study of Campylobacter spp. in a rural village where I traced its prevalence in children less than 6 years old from sources such as village roaming chickens, domestic animals (cattle, cats, dogs and rabbits) and water sources (wells and river). The campylobacters were identified to strain level by serotyping. Prior to that, I did a survey of Campylobacter spp. from carcasses and intestinal tracts of chicken reared on a commercial farm.