Qian Yang

Qianru Yang is a microbiologist/virologist in the Division of Molecular Biology, Office of Applied Research and Safety Assessment, at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in Laurel, Maryland. She received her master’s degree in food science from Oregon State University in 2009 and a Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in 2013. Dr. Yang has a strong background in Food Safety and Food Microbiology.

In 2012, Dr. Yang 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. Their novel LAMP assay was successfully completed its single-lab validation and multi-lab validation of Salmonella detection in food and feed, then has been incorporated into the FDA’s Bacteriological Analytical Manual as an FDA approved reference method. In 2019, she joined the Virology team to work on the surveillance of foodborne viruses which supports the key initiatives of the Office of Applied Research and Safety Assessment, at the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. The team works on developing and validating detection methods for foodborne viral pathogen (especially Norovirus and Hepatitis A virus) from food and environmental samples. Dr. Yang employs traditional microbiological and molecular methods and next-generation sequencing tools in her research.