Staff Profile:Dr. David Owens

Name:

Dr David Owens

Job Title:

Senior Lecturer Emeritus

Responsibilities:

Honorary Fellow (formerly Senior Lecturer in Food Microbiology)

Areas of Interest:

Physiology of Campylobacter jejuni, which I am currently working on.

Indigenous food fermentations, including tempe (cooked soybeans bound into a cake by growth of a mould) and daddawa (a flavouring material produced by growth of Bacillus spp. on legume seeds).

Physiology of lactic acid bacteria, especially in relation to the production of acetoin.

Mechanisms of conductance change in microbial cultures. I devised rational approaches to the design of culture media for conductimetric assays and invented a modified technique (Indirect Conductimetry) for organisms that produce only small conductance changes in media.

Research groups / Centres:

Publications:

Sparringa, R.A., Kendall, M., Westby, A. and Owens, J.D. (2002) Effects of temperature, pH, water activity and CO₂ concentration on growth of Rhizopus oligosporus NRRL 2710.Journal of Applied Microbiology 92, 329-337.

Leereerajumnean, A., Ames, J.M. and Owens, J.D. (2000) Effect of ammonia on the growth of Bacillus species and some other bacteria.Letters in Applied Microbiology 30, 385-389.

Owens, J.D., Thomas, D.S., Thompson, P.S. and Timmerman, J.W. (1989) Indirect conductimetry: a novel approach to the conductimetric enumeration of microbial populations. Letters in Applied Microbiology 9, 245-249.

Owens, J.D. (1985) Formulation of culture media for conductimetric assays: theoretical considerations. Journal of General Microbiology 131, 3055-3076.

Qualifications:

BSc, Bristol; PhD, Reading