Dr. Doug Antczak is a professor at the Baker Institute for Animal Health at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Antczak earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Cornell University in 1969, where he was a Cornell National Scholar, captain of the university polo team, and a member of the Quill & Dagger Senior Honor Society.
After completing a degree in veterinary medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1973, Dr. Antczak conducted post-graduate research in England as a Thouron Scholar, and he was awarded a PhD from Cambridge University in 1978. Since 1979 he has been on the scientific staff of the Baker Institute, and in 1992, he was appointed the Dorothy Havemeyer McConville Professor of Equine Medicine.
During his career Dr. Antczak has made important contributions to equine immunology, genetics and reproduction, and he has collaborated widely with scientists in each of these disciplines. Since 1995 he has been a principal participant in the international Horse Genome Project collaboration.
Dr. James Belknap is proud of his Saskatchewan roots; his mother is from Regina, Sask., and his grandfather, M.A. MacPherson, was well known for protecting the common man in his governmental roles in the legislative assembly and as attorney general of Saskatchewan in the 1920s and 1930s.
Dr. Belknap is a professor of equine surgery at Ohio State University with a clinical focus in podiatry, lameness and soft tissue surgery. His research focuses on the pathophysiology of and treatment development for equine laminitis. He has given over 50 papers at national and international meetings on laminitis pathophsyiology and treatment, and he has authored over 40 published manuscripts on laminitis.
Dr. Belknap has funded projects on sepsis-related, endocrinopathic, and supporting limb laminitis. His research has been funded by the Morris Animal Foundation, Grayson-Jockey Club Research Foundation, American Quarter Horse Association, American Heart Association, and U.S. Department of Agriculture (approximately $4 million in extramural funding). He is currently editing a textbook on laminitis that will be published by Wiley Publishing next year.
Noah Cohen earned his VMD from the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine in 1983. After two years of private equine practice in the Toronto area, he completed his MPH (1986) and PhD (1988) degrees at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health (now the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health). He then completed a residency in large animal internal medicine at Texas A&M University in 1991.
After his residency, Dr. Cohen was hired as an assistant professor of equine medicine at Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine. Currently, he is a professor of equine medicine and associate department head for Research and Graduate Studies in the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at Texas A&M University.
Dr. Cohen is a board-certified internist and Faculty Fellow, Texas A&M University.
Dr. Kathryn Carmalt obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in molecular, cellular and developmental biology at University of California: Santa Cruz in 1998. She came to the University of Saskatchewan to complete her master's degree in toxicology (focusing on immunotoxicology) in 2005.
Dr. Carmalt recently completed her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in 2015. During her veterinary program, Dr. Carmalt was a summer research student who worked on her own research project with financial support from the WCVM Equine Health Research Fund (EHRF). She investigated a novel treatment method for equine laminitis under the supervision of Dr. David Wilson.
Born and educated in Dundee, Dr. Julia Kydd's Bachelor of Science degree in zoology was followed by a master's degree in equine studies at Aberystwyth University. She then went on to obtain a PhD degree from Cambridge University. Her PhD thesis was entitled, "The mare’s immune response to pregnancy."
During this time, Dr. Kydd worked as a research assistant at the Equine Fertility Unit and then as a post-doctoral scientist at the Animal Health Trust in Newmarket where she focused on the equine pathogenesis and cellular immune response to equid herpesvirus-1. During her time at the Animal Health Trust, she met Dr. Hugh Townsend and his family when they visited during an enjoyable sabbatical year.
In 2006, Dr. Kydd moved to the new School of Veterinary Medicine and Science at the University of Nottingham where she is a lecturer in applied immunology and senior tutor for postgraduate students. She has also been awarded a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.
Dr. Katharina Lohmann is a board-certified specialist in large animal internal medicine and an associate professor in the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine (WCVM). She graduated from the Free University Berlin veterinary college, completed her residency training at Texas A&M University and obtained a PhD from the University of Georgia prior to joining the WCVM in 2004.
She works as a clinician in the WCVM's Large Animal Clinic and enjoys teaching clinical medicine, examination techniques and communication skills to undergraduate students. Dr. Lohmann was involved in the handling of an EHV-1 outbreak that occurred in Saskatoon in 2008 and is interested in the clinical and mechanistic aspects of EHV-1 latency.
Dr. Paul Lunn has been the dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at North Carolina State University since February 20, 2012. Previously, Dr. Lunn was a professor and head of the Department of Clinical Sciences at Colorado State University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Before moving to Colorado in 2003, Dr. Lunn worked as a large animal medicine faculty member, and as associate dean for Clinical Affairs and director of the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital at the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Lunn hails from Wales where he grew up in a farming community before studying veterinary medicine at Liverpool University. After a period in private practice in the UK, he pursued clinical training in Ontario and Wisconsin. He completed doctoral research training at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Lunn’s interests have been in equine immunology and infectious disease. His research has focused on influenza virus and EHV-1 infection in horses, and more recently, on infectious diseases of working equids in low-income countries.
Dr. Julia Montgomery is a board-certified specialist in large animal medicine at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine (WCVM). She holds a veterinary degree from the School of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Germany, and a PhD from the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC), University of Prince Edward Island, where she also completed a large animal internal medicine residency.
Dr. Montgomery joined the WCVM Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences as an assistant professor in 2013 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the college's Department of Veterinary Biomedical Sciences.
Dr. Klaus Osterrieder's work centres around the molecular mechanisms of animal herpesvirus pathogenesis — more specifically on equine herpesvirus type 1 (EHV-1) and Marek’s disease virus (MDV). In particular, the latter disease is unique and very exciting as it presents a natural virus-small animal host model in which one can comprehensively and mechanistically study viral patho- and oncogenesis.
Dr. Osterrieder's laboratory has made a number of discoveries in the MDV field — the most influential being the first cloning of an infectious virus genome. This achievement lifted a roadblock, and since then, research in the field has changed very dramatically. Similarly, the work of Dr. Osterrieder's team on tools to modify bacterial artificial chromosomes by Red mutagenesis (published in 2006) has found widespread acceptance — not only among virologists but also researchers in other fields.
The wider recognition of Dr. Osterrieder's work beyond the animal herpesvirus community was also highlighted by the fact that he was awarded an R01 grant from the National Cancer Institute of the USA in 2007 for work on herpesvirus telomerase and genomic integration. This project resulted in the first demonstration that some herpesviruses do integrate their genomes into that of their hosts during latency. Similarly, Dr. Osterrieder's contribution to research on one human herpesvirus, varicella zoster virus (VZV), has advanced molecular tools to study virus genetics and pathogenesis. His research has been funded continuously since 1994 by public funding agencies including the EU, the NIH (NCI and NIAID), the USDA, the DFG and the German Ministry of Economics and Technology.
Dr. David (Dave) Wilson is a board-certified specialist in large animal surgery at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine (WCVM). Born and raised in southern Saskatchewan, Dr. Wilson graduated from the WCVM in 1980. After completing an internship at Iowa State University and a residency in large animal surgery at the University of Florida, he was on faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for 15 years before returning to WCVM in 1999.
Dr. Wilson’s research interests include implant biomechanics, developmental orthopedic disease, minimally invasive surgical techniques and equine laminitis.