Dr. Ronholm obtained her BSc in microbiology from the University of Waterloo and Doctoral degree in microbiology from the University of Ottawa. Her research area involved the study of bacterial surface proteins which would allow the identification of particularly virulent strains of Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella. Her first post-doctoral fellowship was with the Canadian Astrobiology Training Program where her research focused on using next-generation sequencing to investigate how organisms survive in extreme cryoenvironments such as the Canadian high arctic. Dr. Ronholm then held a Vising Fellowship with Health Canada where she focused on developing genomics based techniques for evaluating and improving the safety of several food products, particularly seafood.

Dr. Ronholm’s research interests include using the latest next-generation sequencing techniques to study the microbiome of food-producing animals. Recent research has focused on understanding intestinal microbiome of humans, and correlations between intestinal microbial populations and various health outcomes have been observed. Less is known about the overall intestinal microbiome of ruminants, the effect of feed and husbandry on the ruminant microbiome, and if certain microbial populations are correlated with higher-quality and improved-safety animal food-products. It has been shown that several bacterial pathogens take advantage of gut disbiosis to proliferate and cause infection. Can healthy gut microbiomes be used to mitigate the effects of enteric infection or eliminate it all together? The long-term overarching goal of this research is to understand and harness the power of the ruminant microbiome to generate healthier cattle herds. Possible applied benefits of this research are: decreased use of agricultural antibiotics, lower rates of zoonosis, and safer, high-quality, natural food-products.