Jennifer Julia Quinlan

Jennifer Quinlan is a professor at Drexel University. Her areas of expertise include food safety risks for low-income and minority populations and consumer food safety education. Her laboratory’s work with low-income and minority consumers represents “community to benchtop” research. It has surveyed risks for foodborne illness in both homes and retail stores through sampling and testing for bacterial pathogens and indicator organisms in environmental and food samples collected in the community. Additionally, it examined the use of GIS mapping to identify potential differences in food safety risks for these populations. The laboratory has also collaborated with Drexel's Plasma Institute to explore the potential for nonthermal plasma to eliminate Campylobacter and Salmonella from the surface of raw poultry. The laboratory has used focus groups and surveys to explore differences in handling of food by consumers of different demographics and is currently conducting qualitative research to identify barriers to consumer adopting safe food-handling practices. The laboratory’s work led to the development and dissemination of a highly visible consumer education campaign around safe preparation of raw poultry drexel.edu/dontwashyourchicken. Quinlan currently serves on the editorial boards of Food Protection Trends and the Journal of Food Protection. She has served on USDA’s National Advisory Committee for Microbiological Criteria for Foods and is a former Fulbright Scholar to Corvinus University in Budapest, Hungary.