Food Safety Microbiology Intern

**Position Snapshot**

Location: Konolfingen, Switzerland
Company: Nestlé Product & Technology Center (NPTC) Dairy
Act. Rate: Full-Time
Type of contact: Temporary contract, Internship, 9-12 months
Start date: January 2024

**Position Summary**

We at Nestlé Research & Development in Konolfingen near Bern / Switzerland develop for Nestlé worldwide new products, processes, and packaging concepts in the areas of Dairy and Nutrition.

As a **Food Safety Microbiology Intern**, you will be spearheading the effort to develop novel process technologies, and to drive Data-driven Insights, by connecting multiple sources of information, cleaning, analyzing and structuring them into business-relevant recommendations that drives future Innovation strategy. In your role, you will be leading your own project, partnering with internal technical and commercial function, and, external partners, based across the globe.

We offer a dynamic, inclusive and international working environment with many opportunities across different companies, functions, and regions. Don’t miss the opportunity to join us and work with different teams in an agile and diverse context.

**A Day in the Life of a Food Safety Microbiology Intern**

Assessment of Vacuum Steam as suitable technology for the microbiological sanitation of powder Raw Materials
- Develop DoE with the analytical protocol and perform challenge tests on the selected dry raw materials using the surrogate Enterococcus faecium
- Data analysis and definition of process conditions delivering the required inactivation

Assessment and validation of aseptic fillers during development trials in the pilot plant
- Define and implement procedures to test sterility, using media fill trials and challenge studies.
- Provide data analysis and assistance in root cause analysis, and design improvement opportunities.

Develop and conduct laboratory and pilot plant qualification and validation trials for liquid decontamination technology
- Develop DoE and perform challenge tests with Enterococcus faecium in laboratory and pilot plant, and MS2 phage testing in the laboratory.
- Qualification testing will require working with Salmonella and surrogate strains
- Organise and accompany treatment tests in the pilot plant to prove the laboratory concept
- Computer analysis of the data received from challenge studies to develop predictive models

Build and validate interactive PowerBI and other tools for improved interpretation and analysis
- Become competent in Nestlé data mining / extraction methods from Nestlé datasets and capability to build PowerBI interfaces
- Design and test PBI interface for monitoring operations sterility performance. Refine and re-define important transactions in source SAP datasets
- Develop and test a modelling concept for prediction of environmental monitoring datasets

**What will make you successful**
- Bachelor’s degree or master’s student in Food Microbiology, Food safety or related field
- Microbiological laboratory experience acquired in corporate or academic environment
- Established experience and interest in quantitative microbiology and modelling concepts
- Experience or strong interest in working with dairy products
- Good communication skills
- Computing and IT skills in Excel and databasing, and PowerBI a bonus
- Fluent in English, any other language is a plus

At Nestlé, we want to help shape a better and healthier world, inspire people to live healthier lives and deliver impact at a scale and pace that makes a difference. We do this by fostering a diverse, friendly, supportive, and collaborative environment, that creates positive disruption, embraces innovation, and empowers people and teams to win.
We aim to hire friendly, respectful, inspiring people who care about the people’s lives that we touch every single day.