Magaly Toro, Ph.D, DVM, MSc.

Dr. Toro received her Veterinary degree from the University of Chile in 2004, where she became interested in food safety. In 2005, she enrolled in the master's program in Food and Nutrition at the University of Chile. She became an associate researcher in the microbiology and probiotics laboratory thanks to a scholarship from the same institution. At the same time, she obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in the application for HACCP in the food industry. Later, she joined the Ph.D. program in Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Maryland, College Park, and obtained her degree in 2014. That year, she received an ORISE fellowship to conduct research at the microbiology branch at the Center for food safety and Applied Nutrition at FDA (CFSAN), where she started working in whole genome sequencing and genomic analysis of foodborne pathogens. In 2015, Dr. Toro was recruited as an assistant professor at the University of Chile and promoted to associate professor in 2022. In late 2022, Dr. Toro started at the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

Dr. Toro's primary interest is food microbiology, specifically in the traditional and molecular microbiology of foodborne pathogens. She has led projects related to non-O157 Shiga toxin-producing E.coli and Salmonella spp. and has participated in endeavors to create molecular techniques to detect and quantify foodborne pathogens. She has also led projects evaluating good manufacturing practices (GMP) in food service operations and their relationship with the microbial quality of food produced in those facilities. Her latest interest is water contamination with foodborne pathogens and antimicrobial resistance in foodborne pathogens and the environment. She has published over 30 scientific articles and one book chapter.