August 2025
POPH Graduate Student Research Symposium and Workshop
July 2025
Amy, Amber, Esther and David presented their research at the International Association for Food Protection conference in Cleveland, OH. Amber won a travel award from IAFP – congrats!
May 2025
We had numerous graduations this month! Congratulations to everyone and thanks for all your hard work!
Amy Siceloff: Doctor of Philosophy in Microbiology
Jared Smith: Doctor of Philosophy in Microbiology
Connor Norris: Master of Public Health
Abby Laury: Bachelors in Animal and Dairy Science
Seth Cranford: Bachelors in Microbiology
Leigh Codiniera: Bachelors in MicrobiologyLeighton Whatley joined our lab this month as a new undergraduate student – welcome, Leighton!
David attended Emerald Coast Veterinary Conference (ECVC) in Destin, FL.
April 2025
David was selected for the Dean David Anderson Graduate Student Fellowship to support a DVM doing a PhD in poultry health. Congratulations, David!
March 2025
Megan attended The Beef Industry Food Safety Council (BIFSCo) in Denver, CO. Congrats Megan for winning a student travel award!
Our paper evaluating different methods for sampling in broiler houses was accepted in Poultry Science, “Sampling method influences Salmonella detection and quantification in pre-harvest commercial broiler production”
February 2025
Jared and Amy both successfully defended their theses – congratulations to you, we are excited about your future!
Amy and David gave presentations in the broiler and breeder service tech workshops held at PDRC.
January 2025
The Shariat Lab attended the International Poultry Scientific Forum in Atlanta, GA, where Amy, Amber, Cason, and David presented posters, and Nikki delivered a talk. Congratulations Amber (Alltech award) and David (SCAD best poster) for winning awards!
Megan Lee joined our group this month as a new PhD student in the ILS program – welcome, Megan!
Industry workshops: Amy and David presented about Salmonella in breeder and broiler production.
October 2024
Nikki presented at AMEVEA.
September 2024
The Shariat Lab attended the Southeastern Branch of the American Society for Microbiology in Tampa, FL. Esther, Amber, and Jared won awards for their presentations.
Nikki spent three weeks at the USDA-US Meat Animal Research Center.
August 2024
POPH student symposium
July 2024
Cason and Nikki attended American Association of Avian Pathologists (AAAP) in St. Louis, MO. Congratulations Cason for winning the Avian Biosciences Travel Scholarship!
Amy, Jared, Amber, and Marco presented their research at IAFP in Long Beach, CA. Jared won a travel award from IAFP – congrats!
June 2024
Jared, Amy, Esther, and Nikki attended The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) in Atlanta, GA. Jared participated in a rapid fire presentation.
Our paper was accepted in Journal of Food Protection, “High-resolution Serotyping Reveals Salmonella Surveillance Challenges in the Turkey Industry”
May 2024
Sherwin Shirazi graduated with an MS in Statistics. We’re grateful for his contributions and modeling expertise!
Jared spent a week with our collaborators at the FDA-Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition learning how to perform whole genome sequence analysis of Salmonella. This was supported by a summer grant he won from UGA.
April 2024
Cason gave a talk for FFAR fellows – “High-resolution serotyping reveals Salmonella surveillance challenges in the commercial turkey industry”
March 2024
David and Jared traveled to Ecuador for their water research!
February 2024
Nikki presented at NTF in Austin, TX and got to catch up with lab alum, Megan Crowe who is doing her PhD at UT Austin.
January 2024
The Shariat Lab attended the International Poultry Scientific Forum in Atlanta, GA and Amy, Amber, Cason, and Marco all gave awesome poster presentations on their work. Congrats Amber and Cason for winning awards!
Amber Richards and Amy Siceloff published their paper “Poultry processing interventions reduce Salmonella serovar complexity on post-chill young chicken carcasses as determined by deep serotyping” in the Journal of Food Protection.
Esther Palmer joined our group this month as a new PhD student in the ILS program – welcome, Esther!
November 2023
The lab traveled to Auburn, AL for the Southeastern Branch of ASM annual meeting – congrats, Jared for winning 1st place for Graduate Student Poster Presentations. We also had a lab retreat with a workshop on developing a growth mindset.
We had an awesome collaboration with Lisa Gorski and Dayna Harhay this year looking at “Growth assessment of Salmonella enterica multi-serovar populations in poultry rinsates with commonly used enrichment and plating media“. Our paper was just published in Food Microbiology.
October 2023
Jared Smith’s paper “Prevalence and molecular characterization of Salmonella isolated from wild birds in fresh produce environments” was published in Frontiers in Microbiology.
Nikki was appointed to the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods and will serve from 2023-2025.
September 2023
Amber Richards and Connor Norris had their paper “Genomic and phenotypic characterization of Salmonella enterica serovar Kentucky” published in Microbial Genomics.
August 2023
Marco Reina joined our group this month as a new PhD student in the CBS program – welcome, Marco!
Amber Richards will be starting her PhD in the CBS program – we’re so thrilled you’re staying, Amber!
July 2023
Amy, Jared, Cason, and Nikki presented our research at IAFP 2023 in Toronto in talks, posters, and panel discussions. Amy won 2nd place in the Developing Scientist Competition for her talk – congrats!
June 2023
Nikki participated in a podcast for Food Safety Matters (Ep. 147) describing the challenges of controlling Salmonella in poultry.
Cason and Nikki presented at AAAP in Jacksonville. Cason was awarded best poster!
Nikki was awarded the Bayer-Snoeyenbos New Investigator Award by the American Association for Avian Pathologists.
Nikki convened a panel on current issues in livestock microbiology at ASM-Microbe in Houston and gave talks at the CPS and RMC meeting as well.
May 2023
Nikki was awarded the UGA-CVM John M. Bowen Award for excellence in animal/biomedical research.
Megan Crowe and Renee Smith graduated with their Bachelors in Microbiology, and Megan was awarded the Aaron and Barbara Mitchell undergraduate Research Award. Renee is off to medical school at Vanderbilt and Megan is heading to the University of Texas-Austin to start her PhD. Congrats to both of you and thanks for all your hard work!
The Shariat Lab presented at the Georgia association for Food Protection meeting in Athens, GA. Amy and Jared both won awards for their posters.
David Ayala joined our group as a new MS student in the CBS program. Welcome, David!
April 2023
Cason was selected to be a FFAR Research Fellow – well done, Cason!
March 2023
Tomi Obe’s paper “Combined Quantification and Deep Serotyping for Salmonella Risk Profiling in Broiler Flocks” was published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
February 2023
Nikki found out she got tenure and will be promoted to Associate Professor this summer!
Bryan Larsen successfully defended his Master’s Thesis studying Salmonella serovar dynamics in beef cattle feedlot environments. Congrats Bryan!
January 2023
The Shariat Lab attended the International Poultry Scientific Forum in Atlanta, GA where Emily Cason won an Award for her Poster Presentation and Amber Richards won an Award for her Oral Presentation.
December 2022
Amber Richards graduated with her MPH – well done and congrats, Amber!
November 2022
The Shariat Lab attended the Southeastern Branch of the American Society for Microbiology in Savannah, GA and many of them won awards:
Jared Smith – First Place Graduate Student Oral Presentations
Amy Siceloff – Second Place Graduate Student Oral Presentations
Emily Cason – Third Place Graduate Poster Presentations
Renee Smith – Second Place Undergraduate Poster Presentations
Amber Richards – Travel AwardCongrats, team!
October 2022
Nikki Shariat was the Keynote speaker at this year’s Poultry Tech Summit in Atlanta, GA.
August 2022
Tomi Obe left our lab to begin a tenure track position in the Poultry Science Department at the University of Arkansas. We’re so excited for you Tomi and can’t wait to read the awesome papers that come out of your lab in the future.
July 2022
Amy Siceloff and Nikki Shariat gave talks at the International Association for Food Protection meeting in Pittsburgh, PA. Amy presented her research on resolving Salmonella complexity between pre- and post-harvest and Nikki presented on the impact of deep serotyping in broiler production and on Salmonella serovar ecology in freshwater systems and land-use.
June 2022
New PhD student, Emily Cason, was selected to receive a graduate student Matching Assistantship from the College of Veterinary Medicine.
Jared Smith presented a poster on his work on Salmonella ecology in freshwater systems at the Wildlife Disease Association international conference in Madison, WI.
Tomi Obe’s textbook review article of “The New Microbiology: From Microbiomes to CRISPR” was published
Nikki gave two talks at the AMEVEA meeting in Bogota, Colombia. May 2022
Amy Siceloff received the Berverly Hirsh Frank Graduate Fellowship for women in science. The purpose of this fellowship is to recruit, support, and encourage exceptional graduate-level study and research in all fields of life and physical sciences with emphasis in interdisciplinary and emerging fields. Only two of these are awarded by UGA each year.
Surendra Rasamsetti successfully defended his Master’s Thesis. The first graduate student to complete their thesis in the Shariat Lab. Congrats Surendra and thanks for your hard work!
Amy Siceloff and Jared Smith both received competitive summer research grants from the UGA Graduate School. Amy plans to investigate Salmonella population complexity in post-prevention meat and poultry products. Jared will use these funds to investigate AMR prevalence and diversity in freshwater samples
April 2022
Amy Siceloff’s paper “Regional Salmonella differences in United States broiler production from 2016 to 2020 and the contribution of multiserovar populations to Salmonella surveillance ” was published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
Amber Richards won the Award for Oral Presentation in Microbiology at the Association of Southeastern Biologists in Little Rock, AR for her presentation on Salmonella Kentucky distribution in humans and animals.
Surendra Rasamsetti’s paper “Assessing Salmonella prevalence and complexity through processing using different culture methods” was published in Poultry Science.
March 2022
Bryan Lasen’s paper “Animal feed contains diverse populations of Salmonella” was published in The Society for Applied Microbiology.
Jared Smith’s paper “Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium from wild birds in the United States represent distinct lineages defined by bird type” was published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
February 2022
Jared Smith’s paper “Evidence for common ancestry and microevolution of passerine-adapted Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium in the United Kingdom and United States” was published in Microbial Genomics.
January 2022
Jared Smith presented a poster at the Southeastern Regional Fruit and Vegetable Conference in Savannah, GA.
Shariat Lab at the University of Georgia 