Siddhartha Thakur

Bio

Dr. Siddhartha “Sid” Thakur is a Professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University. He is the Director of Global Health program at both the College of Veterinary Medicine and the NC State University. He was the Associate Director at the Comparative Medicine Institute and led the Emerging and Infectious Diseases Research program. He received his Degree in Veterinary Medicine and Master of Veterinary Public Health from India. He earned his Ph.D. in Population Medicine at the College of Veterinary Medicine, NC State. Before joining the faculty at NC State University, Dr. Thakur was an Oakridge Research Fellow at Center for Veterinary Medicine, FDA, Maryland. He espouses the concepts of “One Health” and seeks to understand how antimicrobial resistance develops in “superbugs” that affect animal and human health. He has won numerous awards including the Larry Beuchat Young Researcher Award by the International Association for Food and the Outstanding Global Engagement award by NC State. He is currently an NC State Chancellor faculty scholar. Dr. Thakur has authored or co-authored 45 peer-reviewed publications and edited two books.

AFFILIATIONS

American Society for Microbiology
International Association for Food Protection
Duke One Health, https://sites.globalhealth.duke.edu/dukeonehealth/

Area(s) of Expertise

Dr. Thakur`s research is centered on two predominant themes. The first revolves around understanding the phenotypic and genotypic similarity and/or diversity of AMR bacterial strains reported in animals and humans. This involves characterizing and elucidating the mechanisms of AMR at the molecular level, analyzing DNA fingerprint patterns, and determining the risk factors that predispose animals and humans to infections by these strains. The second theme focuses on using phylogenetics to study the evolution of drug-resistant bacterial strains at the population level. In this, molecular approaches are undertaken to analyze pathogen evolution on an evolutionary scale.

Publications

• Antimicrobial resistance in food-borne pathogens at the human-animal interface: Results from a large surveillance study in India , One Health (2024)
• Can a One Health approach be a roadmap to reduce salmonellosis? , International Association for Food Protection Annual Meeting (2024)
• Canine uropathogenic and avian pathogenic Escherichia coli harboring conjugative plasmids exhibit augmented growth and exopolysaccharide production in response to Enterococcus faecalis , PLOS ONE (2024)
• Characteristics of antimicrobial resistance in Escherichia coli isolated from retail meat products in North Carolina , PLOS ONE (2024)
• Fluoroquinolone-resistant Campylobacter in backyard and commercial broiler production systems in the United States , JAC-Antimicrobial Resistance (2024)
• Highly virulent colistin-susceptible Salmonella Havana ST1524 carrying the mcr-9.1 gene in food , Microbial Pathogenesis (2024)
• Megaplasmid Dissemination in Multidrug-Resistant Salmonella Serotypes from Backyard and Commercial Broiler Production Systems in the Southeastern United States , FOODBORNE PATHOGENS AND DISEASE (2024)
• Phenotypic and Genotypic Characterizations of Antimicrobial-Resistant Escherichia coli Isolates from Diverse Retail Meat Samples in North Carolina During 2018–2019 , Foodborne Pathogens and Disease (2024)
• SARS-CoV-2 wastewater variant surveillance: pandemic response leveraging FDA’s GenomeTrakr network , mSystems (2024)
• Serovar-level identification of bacterial foodborne pathogens from full-length 16S rRNA gene sequencing , mSystems (2024)