The
Veterinary Training Research Initiative (VTRI)
Successive reports have identified a developing “knowledge gap” in veterinary research in Britain – making both the farming community and the nation as a whole more and more vulnerable to the effects of major outbreaks of animal disease like the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic.
The Veterinary Training Research Initiative (VTRI) aims to fill this knowledge gap by encouraging both student and practising vets to buy into the objectives of the Animal Health and Welfare Strategy 2004 and get involved in the kind of ground-breaking research that could prevent or halt outbreaks of animal disease - and equip the profession with better tools to tackle them when they do occur. 5-year funding of £21.5 million pounds has been set aside to achieve this.
The Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), working closely with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, jointly fund the VTRI. Ambitious in its scope, it aims both to turn the corner on the prevention and control of animal disease and encourage “research awareness” in the veterinary profession. In the long term, VTRI will open up opportunities for personal development in research which will bring enormous benefits both to individual vets and the profession as a whole.
Spread between the Scottish and English Vet Schools, five research and training programmes will be launched by late 2004.
Follow the links below for a brief introduction into the opportunities each vet school programme offers:
- Veterinary Research Training Fellowships in Quantitative
Epidemiology (VT0101) led by Professor Mark Woolhouse, Centre for
Infectious Diseases, University of Edinburgh and Professor Stuart Reid,
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Glasgow.
- Intergration of functional genomics and immunology
and their application to infectious disease in ruminants (VT0102)
led by Professor Hugh Miller and Professor Ivan Morrison Royal (Dick)
School of Veterinary Studies, University of Edinburgh.
- Food-borne zoonotic pathogens: Transmission, pathogen
evolution and control - a programme of training and research (VT0103)
led by Professor Malcolm Bennett Faculty of Veterinary Science, University
of Liverpool.
- Animal susceptibility to infection and disease:
do husbandry and welfare drive microbial colonisation and immune development
(VT0104) led by Professor Tom Humphrey and Dr Mick Bailey
Department of Clinical Veterinary Science, University of Bristol.
- The Cambridge Infectious Diseases Consortium (VT0105) led by Professor James Wood, Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge.
Page last modified: 2 May, 2007