Hannah Ruth Watkins

As a PhD student in the Food Safety and Enteric Pathogens Research Unit at the National Animal Disease Center, my research focus is related to pig intestinal microbial ecology and the development of microbiome manipulation strategies to limit infection by enteric pathogens such as Salmonella. In the era of alternatives to antibiotic use in livestock, investigation and characterization of the complex relationships and inter-dependencies present in the gut microbial environment are crucial to our understanding of colonization resistance mechanisms.