A call is open for a PhD position at the University of Exeter, UK, with Prof. Ronaldo Menezes on Modeling epidemic spreading in cattle herds. This is a joint collaboration with Vittoria Colizza (EPIcx lab) and Dr. Christiane Rocha (Federal University of Lavras, Brazil). 

Deadline is Friday, March 15, 2019.
Full info here: 
https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/modelling-epidemic-spreading-in-cattle-herds-computer-science-phd-funded/?p107128
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/studying/funding/award/?id=3471

Don't miss it!

We published a paper on bovine viral diarrhea (BVD), a disease affecting cattle that is endemic in many regions in Europe, with a marked impact on the economy. 

It is characterized by a rather complex transmission dynamics that led previous work to focus exclusively on within-herd scale. 

In our work we introduced a metapopulation model at the national level considering within-farm transmission dynamics at the animal level and cattle trade between farms as a driver for spatial dissemination. We focused on Italy, a country where BVD is endemic and seroprevalence is very high. We found that dairy farms are the main drivers of BVD persistence in Italy, and any control strategy targeting these farms would lead to significantly higher prevalence reduction, with respect to targeting other production compartments.

Farm productive contexts and the dynamics of bovine viral diarrhea (BVD) transmission​
B Iotti, E Valdano, L Savini, L Candeloro, A Giovannini, S Rosati, V Colizza, M Giacobini
Preventive Veterinary Medicine (2019) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prevetmed.2019.02.001

The paper is part of our research activity on livestock diseases that we are currently expanding, see also these other news on bovine brucellosis and bovine tuberculosis.