Master’s Spotlight: Ashley Tarcin

Ashley Tarcin, a master’s student working in Dr. Steve Ricke’s lab, recently presented two posters at the Arkansas Association of Food Protection conference. This conference encourages improvements in areas of food safety and quality by bringing together scientists, educators, government officials, and other food industry professionals.
Ashley received a second-place award in the category of Foodborne Pathogens and Contaminants in Animal-Based products for her poster, “Elucidating the feather microbiota composition of conventional- and floor pen-housed laying hens over time.” The project examines the microbial composition of the breast, dorsal, and wing feathers of White Leghorn layer hens in conventional and floor-pen housing styles over a 3-month period. Ashley was the lead of this project, and explains how it brings novel perspectives to the field.

Ashley also received a third-place award for the poster “Shelf-life Extension of Poultry Leg Quarters Treated with a Short-Duration Dip (15-s) of Sodium Acid Sulfate” in the Food Processing and Preservation Techniques for Animal-based Product category. This project sought to determine if the shelf-life of a poultry product could be extended with the application of an acid, either alone or in combination with each other. Ashley enjoyed expanding her knowledge in microbiology and food safety with this project, and applied her formal microbiology education in her lab work.
Ashley graduated from UW-Madison this past May with a bachelor’s degree in microbiology and is continuing her master’s program at the university. Her master’s project is focused on applying a bacteriophage to prevent salmonella growth during food withdrawal. She also is researching ways to barcode salmonella and specifically target problematic strains to help alleviate potential issues. Ashley is currently in the preliminary stages of her master’s research, and hopes her project can be applied to improve design treatments for these specific salmonella strains.
Ashley also runs the sequencing center in Dr. Ricke’s lab. She is in charge of 16S rRNA sequencing for internal projects at MSABD, as well as labs on campus and companies outside of UW-Madison that send samples to be sequenced. She also trains other undergraduate students and teaches them technical molecular work. She emphasizes not only the work they are doing, but the reason why they are doing it.
Ashley recommends for students to try new things, even if they are not initially interested in them. She did not see her future in meat science when she first came to UW-Madison, but grew to love the field with her research and connections at MSABD. After her master’s program, Ashley hopes to pursue pharmacy school. Congratulations again, Ashley!
This article was posted in Program Features.