Kelly J. Domesle

Kelly Domesle is a Microbiologist in the Division of Animal and Food Microbiology, Office of Research, at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine in Laurel, Maryland. She has worked in research labs since graduating with her bachelor’s degree in Biology from the College of Charleston in 2003, followed by a master’s degree in Environmental Health from the University of Washington School of Public Health in 2010. Kelly has a strong background in developing detection methods for environmental pathogens, including viral, bacterial, and eukaryotic organisms. She also has considerable research in exploring microbial communities.

In June 2012, Kelly joined the FDA to work with Dr. Beilei Ge on addressing microbial food and feed safety issues in support of the Center for Veterinary Medicine’s regulatory mission. Their research group works on developing rapid, reliable, and robust pathogen detection methods in animal food, characterizing phenotypic and genotypic traits of foodborne pathogens and indicator organisms in animal food, evaluating mitigation strategies for pathogen control in animal food, and investigating dynamics of antimicrobial resistance development in foodborne bacteria. Kelly employs traditional microbiological and molecular methods and newer genomic and metagenomics tools in her research.