Food Safety
Meet Our Global Technical Support Team Members
Did you know our Technical Support Specialist travel up to 75% of the year? That’s 270 days of supporting our customers with training, troubleshooting, and onsite visits! Meet some of our global team members and learn about their experience and favorite parts of their role:
Adam Barnes - Canada, United States, Latin America
Years of Experience
- Worked for 5 years at a third-party laboratory before joining Hygiena.
- 16 years in Molecular Diagnostics for North America
- Bachelor's of Science, University of Wisconsin - Madison
How much do you travel to our customer sites?
40 weeks out of the year.
What’s your Week Like?
Working closely with the Technical support team across Canada, US, or Latin America, training customers/distributors/colleagues on BAX® System, Prep Xpress, RiboPrinter and Innovate System.
Favorite part of your job?
Building partnerships with clients to help to improve food safety programs with the full suite of Hygiena products.
Ana Fuentes - Latin America
Years of Experience
- 4 years working in a food safety third-party lab – Molecular biology supervisor 2 years and Microbiology supervisor 2 years.
- 4 years at Hygiena as TSS, first as Mexico then covering LATAM for Innovate.
- Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology.
How much do you travel to our customer sites?
Up to 60% per month. Traveling has allowed me to visit places and cities I did not know about before. Also, it gives me the chance to interact with different people and understand their traditions and culture around Mexico and South America. I believe knowing people and connecting with them helps me understand how to provide a better service.
What’s Your Week Like?
Troubleshooting with analysts and lab managers, traveling to customer sites to do some training for BAX or follow-up visits. Remote connections with South America to troubleshoot Innovate issues. Calls with clients to troubleshoot immediate problems and to support graph results.
Favorite Part of your Job?
My favorite part is training and teaching the science behind the BAX and all its fine details. The clients’ faces when they finally understand the process, the results and how to interpret them are satisfying.
Casey Simmons - North America
Years of Experience
- 5 years in Food Safety at a third-party lab
- 19 years in Molecular Diagnostics
How much do you travel to our customer sites?
Travel can vary - some months it’s 30%, some it’s 75%.
What’s your Week Like?
A typical week can be lots of conference calls. If in the field, it can be somewhat unexpected; often our labs are running 24/7, so training or troubleshooting can be necessary regardless of shift.
Favorite part of your job?
I still really enjoy training and onboarding our customers. Change can be a challenge but seeing the customer gain confidence and trust in our products is rewarding. One of my favorite things we get to experience in the role is the facility tours; I love learning how things are made.
Binny Ohri - Canada
Years of experience
- 10 years of experience in food microbiology and rapid diagnostics methods for pathogen detection.
How much do you travel to our customer sites?
I travel all over Canada to have a face-to-face meeting with our diagnostics customers at least once every quarter to provide refresher training and help customers improve their BAX workflow and get up to speed with new exciting kits and applications we have to offer.
What’s Your Week Like?
A combination of on-site and remote support including new installations, troubleshooting, training and anything and everything our customers might need to keep running their BAX units.
Favorite part of your job?
The impact we, at Hygiena, create in food safety and diagnostics is my favorite part. Food is something we all relate to and the fact we provide tools to ensure safe food on everyone’s table is what keeps me going!
Thomas Bruhn Moeller - Europe
Years of Experience
- 17 years in molecular diagnostics
- + 5 years of culture media experience
- 22 years in food safety
How much do you travel to our customer sites?
10 weeks out of the year.
What’s Your Week Like?
Troubleshooting with lab managers, supporting the area managers and our distributors. Using CRM as a daily tool, to help keep track and follow up cases. Work closely with the Technical Support Engineers in Potsdam training customers / distributors / colleagues on the BAX System, and also involved in Application Studies.
Favorite part of your job?
Customer satisfaction. Resolving a “difficult” case and have a happy customer is a #1 priority. Being part of a Technical Team, work with like-minded individuals
Emily Tay - Asia
Years of Experience
- Over 4 years of Cell & Molecular Biology and Biotechnology
- 5 years of Plant Molecular Biology
- 20 years in molecular diagnostics (15 years with DuPont, coming to 5 years with Hygiena)
How much do you travel to our customer sites?
Around 50% of the year traveling around Asia (Well, at least pre-covid. Now travels are beginning to pick up again.)
What’s Your Week Like?
On calls with customers, colleagues, getting my CRM and NAV worlds in order, traveling to customer sites, troubleshooting, service/support/training with customers, and running projects with customers.
Favorite part of your job?
Combining knowledge and experience peppered with some intuition and imagination with a dash of good old logic to arrive at the winning solutions for customers.
