Elma Tchilian
Elma obtained her PhD at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London, before working as a postdoctoral fellow in Birmingham, Senior Research Scientist at the Edward Jenner Institute and Principal Investigator in Oxford. Elma identified the leucocyte common antigen (CD45) as a cause of severe combined immunodeficiency in man. She demonstrated the importance of local immunity in vaccine-induced protection against tuberculosis and influenza.
Elma joined the Pirbright Institute in 2014 and is now Head of Mucosal Immunology. She has established a powerful pig influenza model to study immune responses to and transmission of influenza viruses and to test efficacy of vaccines and monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). Elma has developed many tools for studying porcine immune responses including peptide MHC tetramers, cell transfers in inbred Babraham pigs, porcine influenza specific monoclonal antibodies and has characterised the important tissue resident memory cells in the respiratory tract. These studies have shown that pigs make very similar antibody responses to humans against influenza and that protective immunity in pigs differs from that found in small animal models. More recently Elma’s group developed a porcine respiratory coronavirus model to study acute respiratory coronavirus disease. These data demonstrate the utility of the pig as a biomedical model for human disease.
Jodi Lynn McGill
Jodi McGill received her M.S. in Pathology in 2007 and Ph.D. in Immunology in 2010, both from the University of Iowa. She did her postdoctoral fellowship at the National Animal Disease Center, USDA under the guidance of Dr. Randy Sacco and Dr. Ray Waters studying the immune response to respiratory infections in cattle. Jodi is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Preventive Medicine at Iowa State University. The focus of Dr. McGill’s research is to understand the immune response to respiratory infections, and to develop intervention strategies to promote protective immunity in the respiratory tract. She currently studies the immune response to several viral and bacterial pathogens that cause bovine respiratory disease complex in cattle. Jodi was the 2020 recipient of the Zoetis Award for Veterinary Research Excellence at ISU. She was awarded the John G. Salsbury Endowed Chair in Veterinary Medicine in 2021. Dr. McGill’s research has been supported by private industry, not-for-profit research foundations and federal research dollars from the USDA and National Institutes of Health. Jodi serves on number of professional organizations. She is currently serving as President of the American Association of Veterinary Immunologists and is a member the American Association of Immunologists and Conference for Research Workers in Animal Diseases.
Mick Bailey
Mick Bailey graduated with a veterinary degree in 1979 and developed his subsequent career in mucosal immunology, particularly around the involvement of the immune system in postweaning diarrhoea in pigs. Since the development of DNA-based approaches to analysing intestinal microbiomes, his research has focused on the interaction between the developing immune and metabolic systems, and the succession of microbial ecosystems which establish in the intestines of young piglets. He has an interest in evolution of innate and adaptive immune systems across animal species and is currently Professor of Comparative Immunology at Bristol University.
Paolo Trevisi
Paolo Trevisi is since 2014 Associate Professor in animal husbandry at the Department of Agricultural and Food Science (University of Bologna, Italy). His research focused on studying the mechanisms involved in the maturation of the gut during suckling and weaning phases to increase the robustness of pigs against infections, as well as nutritional and dietary interventions alternative to ZnO and antibiotics to reduce post-weaning diarrhoea. Paolo Trevisi chaired the COST Action FA1401 on the factors affecting the gut microbiota on pigs and he is partner of the ongoing EU Horizon2020 projects ROADMAP and CIRCLES, as well as partner of the MSC Action MonoGutHealth. Since 2017 he is member of the Study Commission on Pig of the EAAP (European Federation of Animal Science) and is an Associate Editor for monogastrics for the Italian Journal of Animal Science and member of the editorial board of the Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology. He is appointed as National expert for livestock animals to define the concept paper “Italian microbiome initiative for improved human health and agri-food production”. Until today he is author of more than 100 peer reviewed articles and lead the “LABORATORY OF ANIMAL NUTRITION AND FEEDING FOR LIVESTOCK SUSTAINABILITY AND RESILIANCE
Mariano Fernandez Miyakawa
I am a Molecular Biologist from the University of Buenos Aires (1998). I earned my PhD degree (2003) in the School of Medicine at the University of Buenos Aires in Physiology (biophysics). I was an Invited Researcher at the Tokushima Bunri University (2003). I hold a postdoctoral position at the University of California at Davis (2003-2006). Since 2007 I am Fellow of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET- Consejo Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica) and the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), in Buenos Aires, Argentina. From 2015 to 2019 I was Coordinator of Avian Infectious Disease Program at the National Institute of Agricultural Technology. At the present, I am Principal Researcher at CONICET, Coordinator of the Antimicrobial Resistance and Alternatives Program at INTA, Professor at the National University of Lujan (UNLU) in Lujan, Buenos Aires Province and Vice Director of the Institute of Veterinary Pathobiology at INTA. I am also institutional member of the Argentinean National Commission for the Control of Antimicrobial Resistance (CoNaCra).
The focus of my research interest is related with the physiopathology and the prevention/control of gastrointestinal infectious diseases.
