Assistant Lecturer

Email: Elena.Alexa@tudublin.ie

Tel: (01) 220 8588

LinkedIn: https://ie.linkedin.com/in/elena-alexandra-alexa

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2833-2552

As of November 2023, Dr. Alexa is an Assistant Lecturer in Food Safety and Regulatory Affairs at TU Dublin. Dr. Elena Alexa is a food engineer by training, having a BSc in Engineering and Management in Public Food and Agritourism (2012) and a MSc in Control, Expertise and Food Safety (2014) from Dunarea de Jos University of Galati (Romania). Dr. Alexa obtained her PhD (2017) in Food Science and Biotechnology through an international co-tutorship between University of Burgos (Spain) and Dunarea de Jos University of Galati (Romania).

Following her PhD, Dr. Alexa participated in the European Food Risk Assessment Fellowship Programme (EU-FORA) for a year, which was funded by the European Food Safety Authority. Additionally, Dr. Alexa was able to enhance her knowledge and share best practices in terms of food safety by attending in-person training sessions at EFSA's headquarters as well as Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (Austria), Hellenic Food Authority (Greece), and Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (Germany), as part of the EUFORA fellowship.

From 2018 to 2021, Dr. Alexa worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the MetaResistBugs project (University of Leon, Spain) and from 2021 to 2023 in the DAFM funded HortAssure project (Teagasc Food Research Centre, Ireland). Dr. Alexa's involvement in various national and international projects includes SafeConsumE, SafeFood, Listware, and Promise projects.

Dr. Alexa has been the recipient of Short-Term Scientific Missions associated with research projects or grants obtained from competitions such as COST (FA1202, FA1408), Erasmus, and FEMS.

Dr Alexa is an advocate of extracurricular activities for which she has been implicated in delivering as a group team member several food science related activities to secondary and high school students, by her involvement in activities such as European Researchers' Night, Micro Mundo, Science Week, and STEM.

Currently, Dr Alexa is pursuing a part-time MSc in Researcher Development (2022-present) funded by Teagasc Food Research Centre and University College Dublin (Ireland). Additionally, Dr. Alexa serves as a Guest Editor for the Special Issue "Antimicrobial Resistance in the Food Chain" in the Microorganisms journal and as a reviewer for Genes, Microorganisms, Frontiers in Microbiology, and Folia Microbiologica journals. Dr. Alexa is one of the individuals who can provide scientific expertise and technical support to assist EFSA in performing preparatory tasks concerning Biological Hazards.

Research interests

Food safety; Legislation; Food risk assessment; Biological hazards; Antimicrobial resistance; Biofilm formation; Prevalence studies; Next generation sequencing;

Current or former society member

Society for Applied Microbiology, Federation of European Microbiological Societies, Romanian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Romanian Society of Microbiology.

 

Publications

Researcher ID: https://www.webofscience.com/wos/author/record/2038288

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2833-2552