Campus Life

Texas A&M Vet Med Student Among 4 Recipients Of Prestigious USDA Fellowship

Colette Nickodem received the first USDA fellowship for food safety.
By Margaret Preigh, Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences November 3, 2020

Colette Nickodem
Texas A&M doctoral student Colette Nickodem.

Courtesy photo

Colette Nickodem, a second-year Ph.D. student in biomedical sciences at the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (CVMBS), is a recipient of the first United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) Graduate Student Food Safety Fellowship.

The fellowship, established by the USDA’s Under Secretary for Food Safety, is a one-year, paid program that will support Nickodem in her food safety research interests while also providing mentorship on her research project.

She is one of four graduate students across the country to receive this opportunity.

Nickodem’s winning project aims to utilize naturally occurring bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, in beef cattle feedlots to reduce levels of antibiotic-resistant (aResistant) Salmonella.

Cattle acquire Salmonella from their environment, which can accumulate in their lymph nodes and then can be incorporated into ground beef products. This creates a food safety concern, as humans can become ill from eating this contaminated beef.

“The majority of human salmonellosis cases are due to foodborne illnesses or contaminated food products,” Nickodem said. “It’s very important to make sure that everyone knows this is a thing that happens, that food gets contaminated.”

Nickodem holds a bachelor’s degree in nutritional science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master of public health degree in epidemiology from Texas A&M.

“It’s a full circle because through the nutritional science degree, I had to take a lot of food safety classes that relate back to all of the foodborne pathogens that are spread through animal products,” she said. “Since I have the public health background, I want to always relate what I’m doing back to the human health side of things.”

Media contact: Jennifer G. Gauntt, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, 979-862-4216 jgauntt@cvm.tamu.edu

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