Ashesh Basnet is a Ph.D. student in Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Sciences at Tennessee State University, specializing in food safety and public health microbiology. He serves as a graduate research assistant in the Public Health Microbiology Laboratory, where his research focuses on developing and evaluating interventions to improve the microbial safety of foods. He earned his M.S. in Food and Animal Sciences from Tennessee State University and holds a B.Sc. in Biotechnology from Purbanchal University, Nepal. His research interests include foodborne pathogens, antimicrobial resistance, high-pressure processing, natural and novel antimicrobial interventions, microbial biofilms, food spoilage microorganisms, predictive microbiology, and emerging food-processing technologies. He is particularly interested in understanding microbial responses to processing and antimicrobial stresses and developing effective strategies for pathogen control in food systems. His broader interests include public health microbiology, food safety risk reduction, process validation, and the application of molecular and data-driven approaches to food safety research.