Core Faculty

Dr. Bratcher investigates food safety and niche markets for beef and goat meat. She is currently working on a project to identify gaps in food safety and security procedures among local and regional animal producers and processors who sell directly to consumers and farmers’ markets and may not have adopted the food safety and security measures adopted by larger operators. Once research is complete, training programs will be designed to give local and regional operators added credibility in the hopes of stimulating rural economies.

Dr. Cheng is the assistant director of the Center for Detection and Food Safety. He researches the use of tiny, inexpensive biosensors to improve the identification of foodborne pathogens.

Dr. Allen Davis is an alumni professor of aquatic animal nutrition in the School of Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Aquatic Sciences. He seeks to expand our understanding of the nutritional requirements of species of economic importance and to facilitate the continued development of commercial rations for use in supplemental feed systems.

Dr. Misty Edmondson is an assistant professor in the food animal section of the College of Veterinary Medicine, where her duties include management of clinical hospital cases, didactic teaching, research, and outreach. Her major research interest is theriogenology of cattle, small ruminants, and camelids.

Dr. Huang focuses on food safety and the development of biosensors to detect foodborne pathogens.

Dr. Kevin Keener is director of the Center for Crops Utilization Research and the BioCentury Research Farm at Iowa State University. He has experience providing technical assistance on food safety, food technology, food regulations, and food labeling to small businesses as well as major food companies.

Dr. Emefa Monu comes to Auburn from the University of Tennessee, where she was completing post-doctoral studies. Her goal as a researcher is to improve food security through increasing the microbiological safety and shelf life of food.

Dr. Norton is an expert on data mining and database management. He has recently been named Director of the University’s new Open Source Intelligence Laboratory.

Elizabeth Schwartz is an assistant professor of biological sciences in the College of Sciences and Mathematics. Schwartz has a longstanding interest in the foodborne bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes and in the innate immune responses elicited by this organism.

Dr. Thippareddi is interested in the development and validation of intervention technologies for the food industry to control foodborne pathogens, non-thermal food processing and safety and rapid detection and identification of foodborne pathogens, among other subjects.

Dr. Wang is an assistant professor in the College of Agriculture’s Department of Animal Sciences. Her specialties are food safety and microbiology, and her particular interests include isolation and identification of zoonotic pathogens as well as rapid detection methods for identifying zoonotic pathogens in animal products.

Dr. Waters specializes in researching and publishing in service-learning.

Daniel Wells’ research program is focused on specialty crop production systems in Alabama, and was recommended to the faculty because of his interest in local foods production.

Dr. James E. Witte is the program coordinator for adult education programs in the College of Education. His academic areas of interest include training program development and evaluation as well as how learning is assessed. He is an avid world traveler, having lived and worked in places such as Pakistan, Central and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Japan. His multicultural, multilingual background brings a unique perspective to examining how people acquire skills and information.