June 17, 2024
Symposium to honor retirement of Luis Rodriguez
Submitted by Christine Huncovsky
The Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases, or CEEZAD, will present a symposium in honor of the retirement of Luis Rodriguez at 9 a.m. Thursday, June 20, at the Boehringer Ingelheim Auditorium at the College of Veterinary Medicine.
For more than 30 years, Rodriguez worked on vesicular stomatitis virus, an insect-borne virus that causes disease in domestic livestock and humans. His research focused on the pathogenesis of foot-and-mouth disease viruses in domestic animal species such as swine and cattle. We thank and honor Rodriguez for his years of leadership as the research leader in the Foreign Animal Disease Research Unit, and Senior Leadership Group Agency Representative, Plum Island Animal Disease Center, Agricultural Research Service, USDA.
This event is hosted by Juergen Richt, Regents and university distinguished professor and director of CEEZAD/CEZID, and will feature the following guest speakers: Alfonso Clavijo, director of USDA's National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility; Heinz Feldmann, chief, NIH/NIAID Laboratory of Virology and Disease Modeling and Transmission, USA; Koos Coetzer, emeritus professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa; Barbara Wieland, director at the Institute of Virology and Immunology of Switzerland; and Mahesh Kumar, senior vice president of global biologics R&D at Zoetis, Inc.