Shirley A. Micallef is an Associate Professor in the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture (PSLA) and CFS3 at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA. She conducts research related to specialty crops, with emphasis on the microbial ecology of the crop agricultural environment, environmental reservoirs of enteric pathogens, impact of cropping practices on enteric pathogen dispersal and survival, microbiomes of fruit and vegetables, and Salmonella interactions with plants. She has been awarded several federal and state-supported grants for her innovative research in fruit and vegetable food safety, has published over 40 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters, and has organized symposia and delivered several talks on human pathogen-plant interactions. She currently sits on the Editorial Board of Applied and Environmental Microbiology and Journal of Food Protection. She also teaches courses related to food safety and agricultural microbiology at the University of Maryland.