Invited speaker
Caroline Duchaine, Professor Department of biochemistry, microbiology and bioinformatics, Université Laval and Tier-1 Canada Research Chair on bioaerosols.
Swine confinement buildings lie at the heart of one of Prof Duchaine’s key research themes, which seeks to unravel the complexities of bioaerosols in agricultural settings, with a particular focus on their behavior, mitigation strategies, and associated risks. Viral, bacterial, and microbial aerosols not only influence animal production systems but also pose significant challenges to occupational health. Prof Duchaine’s work spans the spectrum of biosafety, encompassing the modeling of virus transport and the development of mitigation approaches. Within this context, bioaerosols serve as a versatile lens for advancing multiple objectives. Prof Duchaine’s laboratory stands at the forefront of pioneering research into the airborne transport of infectious agents, as well as microbial components that profoundly affect swine production efficiency and health. Her laboratory develops and uses versatile approaches to characterize bioaerosols: molecular, bioinformatics, air sampling, culture, DNA sequencing and engineering
Kurt Houf, professor.
Kurt Houf is a veterinarian working as professor at Ghent University and visiting professor at the University of Antwerp. He specialized with a master after master in veterinary public health and as diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Public Health. He did internships at national and international research institutes, and his doctoral research was on the prevalence and transmission of Campylobacteraceae. He is a member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium and of the scientific committee of the Belgian Federal Food Agency. His research concerns the safety of food of animal origin throughout the food chain, focusing on emerging and neglected bacterial pathogens and pathobionts, particularly in pork and poultry. His research group is part of an interfaculty microbiology lab and is a multidisciplinary team of biotechnologists, biologists, biochemists, veterinarians, engineers, mathematicians, (bio)computer scientists, and technicians. The lab is also the basis of the Belgian bacterial culture collection (BCCM-LMG).
Nicole Pavio, Head of the UMR Virologie, Anses, INRAE, EnvA.
Nicole Pavio is the Director of the Joint Research Unit UMR Virologie, which studies zoonotic or epizootic viruses of major importance to human and veterinary public health. The scientific strategy includes basic questions on the biology of viral pathogens as well as applied research on epidemiology, vaccinology and mechanisms of virus-host cell interaction. For example, Nicole Pavio is conducting a series of projects on the epidemiology of hepatitis E virus in animal reservoirs, particularly the swine reservoir. She is also developing study models to investigate the factors involved in the crossing of the species barrier.