Dr. Erika Ganda, originally from Brazil, is an Assistant professor of Food Animal Microbiomes at the Department of Animal Science. Her research is focused on the application of innovative technologies to investigate animal health and food safety and the development of practices and approaches that can be applied to the agricultural industry. Dr. Ganda is a member of Penn State’s Microbiome Center, Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, and the Bioinformatics and Genomics graduate field. Dr. Ganda served as the president of the multistate research project on Antimicrobial Resistance (NC1206), is a member of the Pennsylvania Consortium for Antimicrobial Stewardship and the American Society for Microbiology. She has extensive experience investigating the effect of third-generation cephalosporins in animal microbiomes, having investigated the bovine milk microbiome upon natural or experimental infection with Gram-negative pathogens, and the effect of treatment with third-generation cephalosporins on healthy and mastitic milk microbiomes. Dr. Ganda has collaborated in several projects that studied the microbiomes of the upper respiratory tract, colostrum, and rumen of dairy animals, in addition to studies that assessed the potential of microbiome analysis to be a useful tool for clinical mastitis diagnosis, and the effect of administration of probiotics, on calves’ health and productivity. These collaborations have provided Dr. Ganda with expertise in translating valuable insights gained through microbiome data into the development of novel animal health interventions.

Dr. Ganda’s lab works in transdisciplinary and collaborative projects aimed at investigating animal microbiomes and their impact in animal and human health, with 35 peer-review articles published to date and several other ongoing studies. For more information, see: https://gandalab.org and https://github.com/gandalab.