Devendra Shah Lab

08/27/2026

The Board of Pharmacy Specialties recently announced veterinary pharmacy as its 17th formally recognized specialty certification program.

08/25/2026

Congratulations to the UF team on this redesign. Restructuring the curriculum, reorganizing courses into a systems-based structure, is actually the more visible, more "solvable" half of this work. The harder half is functional integration: getting faculty to genuinely coordinate day to day, not just look integrated on paper. I've lived this myself, early in my career in vet education, mostly on the functional side, building that coordination by hand, course by course, without the structural support to make it easy. It takes real leadership, constant fine-tuning based on what's actually happening in the classroom, and a willingness to keep adjusting as you go. It's slow, sometimes uncomfortable work, but it's exactly what determines whether a redesigned curriculum becomes real for students, or just stays a well-organized document. Wishing UF's team well as they take this on.

The first two years of the DVM curriculum have been enhanced to further strengthen learning outcomes & support student success from day one.

08/18/2026

A dog food brand has issued an urgent recall after pets were left “unable” to open their eyes.

08/08/2026

Congratulations, Dr.Asmita Shrestha, officially hooded today! 🎓

What a milestone to celebrate. From defense to diploma, rigorous work uncovering how Non-typhoidal Salmonella enterica forms biofilms, from meta-analysis to a novel FTIR detection platform, a 97%-accuracy ML classifier deployed as a public web tool, and a global biofilm transcriptome that maps the conserved genetic programs driving biofilm competence across serovars.

Today wasn't just a ceremony, it was the formal recognition of a body of work that will genuinely move the needle on food safety and public health. Watching a student grow from coursework to independent scientist, and now to "Dr. Shrestha," is one of the most rewarding parts of this job.

So proud of you, Asmita. Here's to the next chapter your science takes you.

07/28/2026

It has been more than 60 years since we faced a widespread threat f...

07/27/2026

The Education Department has recently proposed rules for higher education accreditors such as the AVMA Council on Education. The changes, which have yet to be finalized, largely seek to sever or disrupt long-established relationships that programmatic accrediting agencies have with related professio...

07/27/2026

A career spanning practice, research and industry taught Linda Rhodes that success isn't measured by titles, but by purpose, curiosity and balance.

07/22/2026

Good read from AVMA on client stability and retention among pet owners. Besides practice management, data like this can also be useful for clinical practice and in training DVM students on what AAVMC calls spectrum of care thinking. Left a comment on the piece with an example and thought around how this may fit within the lens of Evidence Based Veterinary Medicine. Curious what others think.

Where pet owners live—and whether they own or rent—can influence both access to veterinary care and how clients connect with your practice over time.

07/20/2026

Proud to share our latest publication, now out in , "A systematic review and meta-analysis of biofilm-forming Salmonella across the farm-to-fork continuum".

How does this research advance food safety?

Biofilm-forming Salmonella aren't a bigger threat because they cause worse disease, biofilm doesn't increase virulence. They're a threat because they're survivors. Once Salmonella forms a biofilm, it becomes far more tolerant of disinfectants, sanitizers, desiccation, and antimicrobials, letting it persist on equipment and in processing environments long after routine cleaning, and repeatedly contaminate food moving through the chain.

Pulling together 88 studies and over 4,300 Salmonella isolates from animals, food, environments, and humans, this paper shows a clear, statistically significant pattern: biofilm-positive NTS prevalence was lowest in animal reservoirs (~58%) and rose steadily through food (~68%), and human sources (~73%).

The data don't trace a direct transmission path from a specific animal to a specific food to a specific human case, but the progressive, step-wise increase across the continuum is exactly what you'd expect to see if biofilm-forming strains are, in fact, the ones surviving each stage and moving forward. It's strong evidence that this enrichment is likely happening in the field, not just a statistical artifact.

This raises a practical question the field hasn't seriously asked:

why don't we routinely test whether Salmonella isolated during outbreak investigations, or recovered from food processing and production environments, is biofilm-forming? Doing so could flag high-persistence strains early, help predict contamination risk, and justify enhanced sanitation and biosecurity measures where they're needed most.

Our laboratory is already building toward that translationalsolution. We have developed a rapid, serotype-independent FTIR-based assay to detect biofilm-positive Salmonella. Check out our recent paper on this new discovery here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.onehlt.2025.101004

A companion web app for widespread adoption is coming soon, part of our broader effort to strengthen surveillance tools that protect the U.S. food supply.

Great work, Dr.Asmita Shrestha!

Non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) remains a major cause of foodborne illness worldwide, and its persistence along the food-production continuum poses a significant public health challenge. Biofilm formation is an adaptive mechanism that enhances NTS survival and persistence outside the primary animal r...

06/30/2026

U.S. New World screwworm cases have risen to 27, prompting expanded Texas quarantines and continued sterile fly releases to contain the outbreak. The post U.S. screwworm cases climb to 27 as Texas qua...