Webcast | Virtual
Event Title
FDA Grand Rounds: Wastewater Surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 Variants: a pandemic response project leveraging FDA’s GenomeTrakr network
December 8, 2022
- Date:
- December 8, 2022
- Time:
- 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM ET
About the Speakers
Ruth E. Timme, Ph.D.
Research Microbiologist and GenomeTrakr Program Lead
Office of Regulatory Scientist (ORS)
Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN)
Dr. Ruth Timme received her Ph.D. in 2006 in Plant Biology at The University of Texas at Austin. At the FDA her research focus includes Salmonella phylogenetics, validation of genomic methods for public health, and developing standards for genomic pathogen surveillance. She is also the lead for FDA’s genomic epidemiology program, GenomeTrakr, for foodborne pathogen surveillance.
About the Presentation
With funding from the American Rescue Plan Act, FDA scientists leveraged an existing laboratory network normally tasked for foodborne pathogen surveillance to start sequencing SARS-CoV-2 from regional wastewater treatment plants across the US. New laboratory and analysis methods, public database structures, and FDA dashboard summarizing data collected were developed for this project.
Learning Objectives
- Discuss how the FDA funds laboratories across the US to sequence the genomes of foodborne pathogens in food, water, or other environmental samples.
- Discuss why the FDA stood up wastewater surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 variants and sub-lineages.
- Discuss how important timely public data release is for pathogen surveillance.