College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition

Jasna Kovac is an Associate Professor at The Pennsylvania State University's Department of Food Science. She earned her BSc in microbiology and a PhD in biosciences/biotechnology from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she worked on molecular epidemiology of antimicrobial resistance in Campylobacter. Dr. Kovac conducted pre-doctoral and post-doctoral research in microbial genomics at the University of Oxford and Cornell University in Maiden and Wiedmann labs, respectively. In 2017, she assumed a faculty position at The Pennsylvania State University. She is actively engaged in microbial food safety research domestically and internationally, particularly in Ethiopia and Cambodia. Her lab integrates next-generation sequencing and microbiological methods to investigate factors affecting foodborne pathogens' transmission, persistence, virulence, and antimicrobial resistance. Kovac lab leverages research findings to develop bioinformatics and genomics-based tools to facilitate food safety risk assessment.