Katrien her current research focuses on preservation techniques to improve the microbial safety and quality of food products with expertise on the use of surrogate microorganisms in challenge tests to assess or validate the sufficiency of food production processes and food storage conditions.
Katrien is a post-doctoral researcher at the Food Microbiology and Food Preservation (FMFP) research unit and is working under an innovation mandate spin-off supported by VLAIO. She obtained her PhD in food microbiology in 2020 at the faculty of bio-science engineering (Ghent University) and has a Msc. degree in biomedical sciences from the faculty of medicine and health sciences (Ghent University).
From 2014 till 2016 Katrien worked on different short-term research projects related to Clostridium botulinum spores, microwave heating and detection of food pathogens in food products using PCR.
In 2016 she started her PhD project on B. cereus endospore evolution and obtained her PhD in 2020.
Her PhD research focussed on the impact of Bacillus cereus endospore evolution on food safety, with an emphasis on UV-C and wet heat stress. Katrien has presented her research on multiple national and international conferences and received several grants and awards.
Since 2020 Katrien is working as a project manager on food spoilage and she received a VLAIO innovation mandate in 2022 to continue her work with challenge testing to improve the microbial safety and quality of food products.
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