James B Day
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, USA
Biography
James B Day is a research microbiologist at the U. S Food and Drug Administration in College Park, Maryland where he is involved in developing detection methodologies for bacterial pathogens in contaminated foods. He has developed techniques for rapid identification of Francisella tularensis, Salmonella enterica and Listeria monocytogenes in various food matrices and recently established a novel macrophage-based assay for enrichment of intracellular bacterial pathogens for enhanced identification. He earned his Ph. D from the University of Miami School of Medicine (UM) where he worked on bacterial pathogenesis of Yersinia pestis. At UM, he developed a widely used system to measure virulence protein secretion and host cell translocation. He went on to complete his postdoctoral studies at Harvard Medical School where he worked on type III secretion mechanisms of Salmonella enterica as well as regulatory factors that control virulence protein induction.