Jennifer C Acuff

Jennifer C Acuff is an Assistant Professor in Food Microbiology and Safety at the University of Arkansas’s Food Science Department, with a dual appointment as Director of the Experiment Station. Her research targets pathogen reduction in beef, ready-to-eat foods, and low-water activity foods through post-harvest interventions, while integrating Cooperative Extension to address industry-specific challenges.

• Ph.D. in Food Safety and Microbiology, Virginia Tech (2020)
• Master’s in Food Microbiology, Kansas State University
• B.S. in Biology, Abilene Christian University

Her work spans thermal/non-thermal inactivation methods, probiotic applications for pre-harvest control, and environmental pathogen management in meat processing. Recent publications emphasize surrogate validation, gaseous antimicrobial treatments, and risk modeling for industrial processes.

Acuff teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in food microbiology, equipping students with pathogen control strategies and emphasizing cross-disciplinary food safety integration in public health and medicine. She serves on the Journal of Food Protection’s editorial board and leads committees in food safety societies.

• IAFP 2019 Student Travel Scholarship Award

Grants include USDA-NIFA funding for gas transport modeling in low-moisture foods and industry partnerships with Dairy Management Inc. and Arkansas Beef Council. Her lab investigates bacterial attachment mechanisms and develops scalable decontamination protocols.