UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Jasna Kovac, associate professor and Lester Earl and Veronica Casida Career Development Professor of Food Safety in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, has been selected to receive the 2025 Award for Early Career Environmental Research by the American Society for Microbiology.
The award recognizes an early career investigator with distinguished research achievements who “has improved our understanding of microbes in the environment.” The award consists of a commemorative piece and a $1,400 honorarium to help cover Kovac’s travel expenses to the society’s Microbe Meeting, which will take place from June 19 through June 23, 2025, in Los Angeles, California. She will be publicly recognized along with other leading scientists and researchers in the field for their professional accomplishments and contributions to research, education, clinical laboratories, service and scientific diversity.
Kovac is being honored for dedicating her career to improving microbial food safety through a precision food safety approach. Her lab employs cutting-edge microbiological, next-generation sequencing and cell culture methods for prediction of risk associated with foodborne pathogens, and microbiome-informed assessment and prediction of contamination of water and food processing environments with pathogens.
She has published several papers in journals such as Microbiome, mBio, Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, and Nature Communications. Additionally, she is highly active in disseminating her research, as evidenced by 30 national and international invited speaking engagements, eight workshops, and 136 accepted poster and oral presentations at conferences.
According to Robert Roberts, professor and head of the Food Science Department, Kovac is most deserving of this recognition, adding that, to date, her lab’s research has been supported by nearly $7 million in grants and contracts from 11 funding agencies.
“Her accomplishments in microbiology are very impressive for a researcher early in her career,” he said. “She has already made significant contributions and is held in high esteem by her colleagues.”