Dr Marina Muñoz

Graduated in Chemistry, her PhD was on the application of new antimicrobial agents to control the security of fresh-cut vegetables.
Awarded a 4-years postdoctoral fellowship to work about the application of mathematical modelling techniques and quantitative risk assessments to microbiological data of Listeria monocytogenes under heat or natural antimicrobial treatments.
Joined the Institute of Food Research in July 2010.

Main interests:

Improvement of the general understanding of bacterial behavior after heat treatment.
Development of new predictive models for pasteurized egg products contaminated with Salmonella, including probability of growth and single cell variability.
Integration of data generated by the model into quantitative microbiological risk assessments.

Marina Muñoz-Cuevas, Pablo S. Fernández, Susie George and Carmen Pin. (2010). Modeling the lag period and exponential growth of Listeria monocytogenes under conditions of fluctuating temperature and water activity values. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 76(9) 2908-2915. (doi:10.1128/AEM.02572-09)
Muñoz, M., Guevara, L., Palop, A. and Fernández, P.S. (2010). Prediction of time to growth of Listeria monocytogenes using Monte Carlo simulation or regression analysis, influenced by sublethal heat and recovery conditions. Food Microbiol. 27,468-475. (doi:10.1016/j.fm.2009.12.002)
Pin, C., M. D. Rolfe, M. Muñoz-Cuevas, J. C. D. Hinton, M. W. Peck, N. J. Walton, and J. Baranyi. (2009). Network analysis of the transcriptional pattern of young and old cells of Escherichia coli during lag phase. BMC Systems Biology. 3:108, 1-17 (doi: 10.1186/1752-0509-3-108)
Le Marc, Y., Plowman, J., Aldus, C.F., Muñoz-Cuevas, M., Baranyi, J. and Peck, M.W. (2008). Modelling the growth of Clostridium perfringens during the cooling of bulk meat. Int. J. Food Microbiol. 128, 41–50 (doi:10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2008.07.015)
Muñoz, M., Guevara, L., Palop, A., Tabera, J., and Fernández, P.S. (2008) Determination of the effect of plant essential oils obtained by supercritical fluid extraction on the growth and viability of Listeria monocytogenes in broth and food systems using flow cytometry. LWT-Food Sci. Technol. 42: 220-227 (doi:10.1016/j.lwt.2008.06.007)