Join us for the next event in a new Series: Te Whare Wānaka o Aoraki Lincoln University Excellence Series. This series has been designed to showcase leadership in various disciplines including the opportunity to promote the University’s distinctive and impactful applied research. This series celebrates research excellence and promotes a public forum to a broader community, highlighting Lincoln University’s specialist land-based contribution to driving New Zealand’s prosperity and intergenerational wellbeing.
Professor Stephen On is leading this event discussing the fascinating and complex subject of the microbiology of food. On the one hand, food may contain one, or even several pathogens that make people ill, and can even kill them. Global estimates of 600 million people each year falling ill from foodborne illness have been made, and this is likely to be an underestimate. The social and financial consequences of this burden of disease are of great significance.
However, there are many foods and beverages that would not exist without the activity of microorganisms. Wine, beer, cider, cheese, yogurt, kombucha, bread, sauerkraut, kimchi and others – depend on the action of fermentative microorganisms for their production. Such organisms may be incorporated into probiotics, aimed at maintaining our health or even used to treat certain conditions. The financial and social benefits of these microbes are therefore also significant.
How do we differentiate the good from the bad? How do we transform an unknown organism into a known one? Can we tell which organism is capable of making an award-winning wine or beer from those that will only result in “plonk”?!
Join us as we hear from Professor Stephen On who will share his research insights into what progress has been made, where it may lead to, and some of the challenges and indeed dangers that lie ahead.
Timings
4.00 pm - Networking and drinks
4.15 pm - Welcome & introduction from LU Vice-Chancellor
4.20 pm - Presentation from Speaker
4.50 pm - Summary
5.00 pm - Networking and questions over drinks and nibbles
5.30pm - Event Ends
About Our Speaker
Professor Stephen On
Stephen undertook his PhD at the Public Health England Central reference laboratory in London, developing improved methods for the identification of certain important foodborne, human and veterinary pathogens. He subsequently moved to the Danish Institute of Food and Veterinary Research in Copenhagen, Denmark, establishing his own research group in this area, before relocating to New Zealand in 2005 to become Leader of the Food Programme at ESR. He was appointed as an Associate Professor at Lincoln University in 2015 and became a full Professor in 2022. Stephen’s research has spanned phenotypic and molecular diagnostics, gastrointestinal disease, comparative genomics, epidemicity factors and microbiological aspects of wine and beer production. He is Chairman of the ICSP (International) sub-committee on the taxonomy of Campylobacter and related bacteria and presently serves on the Executive Board for the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes. He is a member of the Science Leadership Team of the NZ Food Safety and Science Research Centre, and Deputy Director of the Lincoln University Centre of Foods for Future Consumers. He has published over 170 articles in peer-reviewed journals and books, is the recipient of three academic/professional awards (2001, 2014, 2017) and has contributed to various national and international expert advisory groups.
Research profile Stephen On
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