
I am an SRUC Professor of Population Medicine and Zoonoses, an SRUC Research Team Leader and Head of Veterinary Epidemiology based at SRUC, Inverness.
My current focus includes livestock disease control with an overarching interest in population medicine and the dynamics of infectious inter-herd diseases and zoonoses. Uniquely I use my background in large animal veterinary practice combined with experience working alongside livestock keepers with outbreak investigation studies and clinical pathology expertise to investigate how effective disease control should best be implemented. It was my increasing involvement in academia that led to a team moving from SAC Consulting to SRUC Research in 2005: the balance away from consultancy in favour of research.
A project manager working at national and international levels, I am a past Director of the EPIC partnership and part of the management teams for the concluding EC ParaTB Tools Project and Defra surveillance review. I have extensive experience of working with industry and helped initiate several cattle disease programmes, including HI-Health, PCHS and Cattle Health Certification Standards (CHeCS).
I am increasingly involved in senior level policy development. With others I have pioneered new approaches which combine epidemiology with socioeconomic factors to examine how infectious diseases fit within the biological, economic and social context of farming and the food marketing chain. I am also part of STOC free
I am called upon for national and international consultancies. I am a visiting professor in Veterinary Epidemiology at the University of Glasgow;. To add to this I frequently act as an external examiner - for example at institutions including the Universities of Surrey, Edinburgh and Utrecht.
I am regularly invited to speak at international meetings and conferences and have:
- Personal Chair in Population Medicine and Zoonoses
- MSc Analytical Epidemiology, University of Guelph
- MRCVS BVMS University of Glasgow