Dr. Rodney Owusu-Darko is a Lecturer in Food Science and Technology at the School of Health and Life Sciences. Rodney recieved his Ph.D. in Food Science from the University of Pretoria (South Africa), where he worked on the molecular characterisation of Heyndrickxia sporothermodurans (formerly Bacillus sporothermodurans), isolated from UHT milk. Rodney holds an M.Sc. in Food Biotechnology from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, working on single cell protein in a project funded by Marlow Foods, UK. He undertook his B.Sc. (Hons) in Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Ghana, Legon.

Prior to joining Teesside University, he held a postdoctoral scholar's position at the University of Pretoria as part of a Bill and Belinda Gates Foundation funded project involving Mozambique, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Canada and Denmark. The project utilised NGS technologies to characterise foodborne pathogens with the aim of estimating the burden of disease in the study sites.

At Teesside University, Rodney teaches both at the undergraduate and graduate levels and is Module leader for Food Biotechnology, and Food Safety and Microbiology. 

Rodney is particularly interested in multidisciplinary research with a view to sustainable solutions to improve livelihoods. From agrarian science to food science and technology, he has experience and interests in the intersection between food safety and security, health and policy systems.

Rodney's expertise and interests include:

• Microbial food safety and inactivation
• Genomic epidemiology
• Microbiomes in food and environmental systems using NGS
• Antimicrobial resistance 
• Gut microbiome studies
• Food fermentations and alternative proteins
• Microbial bioprospecting