Kerry Cooper, PhD

Kerry Cooper, PhD, attended Sterling College on a basketball scholarship, where in 1998 he obtained his bachelor of science degree in biology.  He spent the next three years working as an environmental health specialist at the Navajo County Health Department in Arizona, focusing on foodborne outbreak investigations, food establishment inspections and environmental health complaints.

In 2001, Cooper entered the pathobiology PhD program in the U of A’s Veterinary Science and Microbiology Department.  While there, he conducted his doctorate research with Dr. Glenn Songer,  where he focused on the pathogenesis of necrotic enteritis in poultry. After earning his PhD in 2007, he spent four years as a postdoctoral fellow, also at the U of A, in Dr. Lynn Joens's laboratory. His postdoctoral research focused on the genomics, epidemiology and pathogenesis of the foodborne pathogen Campylobacter jejuni.

In 2011, Cooper moved to the Produce Safety and Microbiology Unit of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service in Albany, California, for a second postdoctoral fellowship, where his research focused on the comparative genomics of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli.  In 2013, Cooper became an assistant professor at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) in Northridge, California, where his research laboratory specialized in various aspects of food microbiology, particularly focussing on the genomics, epidemiology and pathogenesis of bacterial foodborne pathogens.

In 2017, Cooper moved back to the U of A, where he is now an associate professor of food safety and epidemiology in the School of Animal and Comparative Biomedical Sciences. He continues his research on the genomics, epidemiology and pathogenesis of bacterial foodborne pathogens, produce safety and microbiome of various fruits and vegetables.