The big picture: food from all angles

Sophia Johler originally wanted to become a veterinary surgeon. It was during her doctorate at the Institute for Food Safety at the University of Zurich that she discovered her passion for food microbiology research: “I wanted to do something challenging for my doctoral thesis, something I could really dive into,” she recalls. After a few months, her professor asked her whether she could imagine pursuing a career in research and work at the interface of food and microbiology. “I’d never even considered an academic career before,” she says. “So I had to reconsider my life plans, and brand new possibilities opened up before me.”

After completing her doctorate, Johler did a postdoc in the Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at New York University (NYU) – home of “godfather of staphylococci” Richard P. Novick. This was followed by stays as visiting scholar at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna and the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment in Berlin. She became an assistant professor at University of Zurich, where she led a small research group. By now, she has become a leading researcher in the field of food safety – and, since the summer of 2024, Chair of Food Microbiology at LMU’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the Competence Center for Food Safety.

One Health: humans, animals, and environment

“What makes our work in this area special is our conceptualization of food safety in a One-Health context,” she explains. “One Health is a transdisciplinary, cooperative approach thats recognizes that human, animal, and environmental health are interconnected and cannot be viewed in isolation from each other.” In this respect, food lies exactly in the overlap of these three dimensions and is a quintessential One Health topic.

Johler’s research group thus investigates food at all levels – and in cooperation with many different scientific disciplines. In one innovative approach, for example, the veterinary scientist creates molecular fingerprints of bacteria. She then uses these fingerprints in conjunction with bioinformatics and artificial intelligence to predict whether germs in a foodstuff pose a risk to human health. “We’re trying to become more precise and assess and control risk in a more differentiated manner,” says Johler. “This will lead to much less food being wasted as fewer foodstuffs erroneously being classified as high risk.” Her enthusiasm for microbiology has even spilled over to her three little sons, who “love watching the old animated TV series Once Upon a Time … Life, which explains processes in the human body. They want to be B lymphocytes and fight pathogens.”

However, Johler’s research is not limited to microbiology. She looks at the big picture. She was drawn to risk analysis research because she was convinced that certain topics needed to be considered from multiple perspectives – across discipline boundaries. “This is difficult, because as experts in our own field we are often not used to seeing beyond this horizon.” In addition, sustainability is very important to her: “We must not sleep through the vital transformation processes ahead because everybody is tending their own little garden.”

AI proxy negotiators

One of the subject-areas Johler investigates is the use of biopesticides in agriculture – a highly complex topic. It requires weighing up the pros and cons for people, the environment, and nature and balancing trade-offs. In a current project, she is employing an unconventional method to find innovative solutions and bridge the gaps between the individual stakeholders: artificial intelligence.

The MicRISK2030 consortium she leads employs large language models that debate each other. This makes it possible to include the evidence bases of the various fields, and the process is considerably faster and more solution-oriented than is sometimes the case for people with different opinions. “In our AI approach, we use so-called agent-based models. Each stakeholder – such as farmers, consumers, and regulatory authorities – is represented as an AI model.”

Stakeholder representatives feed and train these agents with information reflecting their perspectives. When that is done, the proxies of the individual stakeholders thus created begin to negotiate with each other, and the human stakeholders are supported in their decision-making in a human-in-the-loop approach. Sometimes this produces completely unexpected new solution spaces, according to Johler. “We call this AI-assisted risk negotiation. It’s a highly novel research approach – it’s only two years since such problems became mathematically solvable in the first place.” It is capable in particular of balancing trade-offs for highly complex cross-disciplinary One-Health questions, which traditional risk analysis processes would scarcely be able to accomplish. Furthermore, the AI remains constructive even when discussing controversial subjects where human negotiators often struggle to stay calm, constructive, and focused on the question at hand – when discussing things like the effects of climate change, say, or political differences.

Considering a variety of perspectives

For Johler, the exciting thing about this type of research is its highly interdisciplinary nature. The food expert works with colleagues from the domains of mathematics, physics, epidemiology, chemistry, human medicine, ethics, environmental microbiology, and risk assessment – and naturally with the various stakeholders from agriculture and environmental and consumer protection as well. Johler herself is a trained veterinarian and also obtained a master’s degree from the Institute of Applied Psychology at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. “I thought I’d need that more for my management role, but of course it’s extremely handy for overseeing group-dynamic processes.” On top of this, her experience as a veterinary specialist at the European College of Veterinary Public Health (ECVPH) has proved helpful.

As one of the deputy women’s representatives at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Johler works for equality and seeks to support women and all other disadvantaged groups. “I’m also on the Mentoring Committee, which gets behind promising young postdocs and provides them with intensive support for a period of two years through exchange with a mentor, grants, courses, and workshops, guiding them on their path to a professorship.” In addition, Johler is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Food Microbiology – one of the two leading journals in this field worldwide. She is also on the board of the European College of Veterinary Public Health, which shapes the training of European veterinarians in the sphere of veterinary public health. “It’s inspiring to look across national boundaries and see what’s going on elsewhere in this area and what we can achieve together.”