Main challenges in poultry farming. Avian influenza

Helena Lage Ferreira

Dr. Ferreira has DVM degree at São Paulo State University (UNESP, Brazil), PhD in Genetics and Molecular Biology at University of Campinas (UNICAMP, Brazil), and Post-doctoral studies on Avian Influenza at the Veterinary and Agrochemical Research Centre (VAR, Belgium). She was research assistant at VAR and currently works as Assistant Professor at University of São Paulo, Brazil.
Her research interests are focused on epidemiology, diagnosis tests, protection and immunity afforded by vaccines of the most important diseases affecting the poultry industry, including avian influenza, Newcastle disease and avian metapneumovirus. She has been awarded with the Bunge Foundation Awards - Animal and Plant Health Protection - Youth category (2011), Best Poster Award - young Investigator category at the 7th International Symposium on Avian Influenza (2009). Dr. Ferreira is member of Committee for Poultry Health National Program
at the Ministry of Agriculture, Brazil.

Taiana Pereira da Costa

Dr. Costa is a veterinary surgeon (UNESP, Brazil) with a PhD in Veterinary Pathology (University of Georgia, USA) and Post-doctoral studies on Avian Virology and Pathology (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain).
Her research interests are focused on host factors that affect viral pathogenesis, particularly avian influenza viruses in poultry and wild birds. She has received awards for her work with avian virology, including the Best Poster Award at the Southern Conference on Avian Diseases/IPSF (2010), the Terry Amundson Student Presentation Award at the International Conference of the Wildlife Disease Association (2010), and the Second Place Poster Award - Graduate Student category at the 7th International Symposium on Avian Influenza (2009).

Cintia Hiromi Okino

Graduated in Veterinary Medicine and concluded MS and PhD in Veterinary Pathology at São Paulo State University (UNESP- Brazil). Dr. Okino works at the Avian Virology Laboratory, Embrapa Swine and Poultry, a Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, where she develops research on avian respiratory viruses (Avian Infectious Bronchitis virus, Avian Metapneumovirus, Newcastle disease virus and Avian Influenza virus). The research includes evaluation of Immune
Responses and Molecular Diagnostics for these diseases. She has published articles about Avian Infectious Bronchitis virus in national and international journals and she won the “José Maria de Lammas Filho award” in 2013 during the Brazilian Poultry Sciences meeting (FACTA).

Shamus Patrick Keeler

He completed an MS and MEd in Biology from East Stroudsburg University (East
Stroudsburg, PA, USA), and a PhD in infectious diseases at the University of Georgia (Athens, GA, USA). Dr. Keeler is a postdoctoral research scholar at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, where he researches the innate immune response against influenza A virus. He has been involved in research on a wide range of wildlife pathogens including Avian Influenza virus, Avian Coccidiosis, and several bacterial pathogens of white-tailed deer. He won the Wildlife Disease Association Graduate Student Scholarship Award in 2012 and has received postdoctoral fellowships from both the Morris Animal Foundation and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Muhammad Munir

After graduation in Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Munir has completed his PhD studies on the pathobiology of poultry viruses at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden. Dr. Munir is now Institute Fellow on Avian Innate Immunity and Host Genetic Diversity at The Pirbright Institute, UK. Research of Dr. Munir’s Group aims to understand the innate immune responses in different avian hosts that range from sensing of viruses to terminal IFN effectors mediated by myriad interferon stimulated genes. They have adapted large-scale, genome-wide and high throughput lentivirus-based screening platforms to investigate, both generically and specifically, the interaction of viruses with host immune esponses, deciphering differential host responses to diverse avian pathogen, and the bases for genetic resistance/susceptibility of different avian species. They are also investigating the strategies that viruses use to escape from host defenses. Using reverse-genetics systems for Newcastle disease virus and avian metapneumoviruses, they are applying genome-wide transcriptomics and proteomics approaches to understand the molecular determinants of viral pathogenesis and the ways that viruses have adapted to circumvent these responses. With his extensive experience in Veterinary Virology, Dr. Munir has published more than 55 articles, 4 books and 12 chapters in different books.