I have recently completed a report for the New Zealand Deer Industry (DINZ) to support their trade access to the German market. This was a task I really enjoyed, as I could use my experience in both the New Zealand and European environment and it was very rewarding to help find a practical solution to a challenge to trade.
We now have quite a few projects in the pipeline for 2012 and I am looking forward to share them once they are finalised. I really enjoy diversity and next year seems to have a nice mix of research, training and more operational tasks in the bag for us. I have also just confirmed a trip as a “Visiting Scientist” to Japan in February 2012, which is organized by the Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine. The trip will include research consultancy on the molecular epidemiology of BVD-virus and I will teach three seminars, including one in Tokyo.
Finally I am off to Nelson next week to attend the Aquaculture NZ Conference. I am looking forward to learn more of the industry during this meeting and get to know some more of the people involved.

I attended the 5th International Symposium on GIS/Spatial Analysis in Fishery and Aquatic Sciences in Wellington last week. My presentation was titled: “Epidemiological methods and their application to aquatic disease control” and was co-authored by my colleagues Andres Perez and Fernando Mardones from UC Davis. Not really my home turf speaking in front of such an audience, but the presentation was very well received and led to some great discussions, which underlined the wide applicability and value of epidemiological methods. I met some very interesting people and am looking forward to potential collaborative projects that might come out of this exchange of ideas and concepts.

We received some very good news in July – Petra was made an Associate of Safe Food Solutions (SAFOSO), a Swiss consulting and capacity building company. Their expertise is based on extensive experience and in-depth knowledge of many different aspects of animal health, control of food-borne and other zoonotic diseases, food and feed safety. Team members include Prof. Ulrich Kihm, Dr. Ulrich Sperling, Prof. Katharina Stärk and Manon Schuppers. Epi-interactive is looking forward to working with the SAFOSO team to find the best possible solutions for our clients.

CLICK HERE to visit the SAFOSO homepage.

The last two weeks have been busy for me. First I attended the annual conference of the New Zealand Veterinary Association in Hamilton. The topic was “Celebrating 150 years of the Veterinary Profession” and I thoroughly enjoyed catching up with my colleagues and hearing about the latest developments. After that it was off to Australia’s Gold Coast to attend Science Week, the annual meeting of the Australian College of Veterinary Scientists, where I presented on 7pegs and my work with Cawthron on OsHV-1 in New Zealand. During the AGM I have also taken on the responsibility of editing Epigram – the Epidemiology Branch’s newsletter – and am looking forward to contribute to the College in this role. Now it is back to business as usual, with the main focus on completing current contracts.

I am very proud to announce that we now have a website for our collaboration skills project 7pegs – www.7pegs.com. It has been a massive effort by both the Inspire Leaders as well as Epi-interactive team to launch the project over the last weeks. One thing that is very important to me, was to create a programme that helps project managers, emerging and established leaders, project teams, technical and general staff alike to make collaboration work for them. You can contribute to our ongoing research for better collaboration by completing our online survey, which will also qualify you for entering the draw to win a tent. Don’t hesitate to contact me at petra@7pegs.com to discuss how 7pegs can help you to collaborate better.

While 7pegs has dominated my life in the last weeks I was also recently approached to join the Editorial Advisory Board of Preventive Veterinary Medicine for the next two years. I have gladly accepted this offer and am looking forward to support the journal and its activities.

A lot has been happening for Epi-interactive in the last months. We were busy teaching on the Massey University MVM Module "The interface of human and animal disease" which has been a very interesting six weeks, filled with working with a great group of dedicated people including colleagues from SAFOSO in Switzerland.

Epi-interactive has also started working with Cawthron Institute and provides epidemiological advice to their work on Ostreid Herpes Virus, which has recently caused major problems to the New Zealand Oyster Industry.

Good news have also come from the journal Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology. They have just accepted a paper, which has been put together by the core team of mEpiWorks.

Muellner, P., Zadoks, R., Perez, A., Spencer, S.E.F., Schukken, Y. H., French, N. P. The integration of molecular tools into veterinary and spatial epidemiology. Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology– in press.

I am also very excited about our in development joint project with Inspire Leaders on collaboration skills. We will shortly provide information on this joint-venture on a seperate web site.

That time of the year again! Well it’s been an interesting year for Epi-interactive and things are progressing very well. 2010 has seen the start of the “Making Collaboration Work” project, which I am very excited about. This is a little out of the box for me, but has a great practical value for researchers and scientist to enable them to solve complex problems in a collaborative (interdisciplinary) environment. On a slightly different note visiting GEOVET in December has really opened my eyes to the potential of combining spatial and molecular tools and I hope to find some time in the coming year to work on this. There are also some other projects in planning which I will announce in time and I am looking forward to continue my research and teaching work with the EpiCentre as well as mEpiLab at Massey University in the new year. Watch this space…

I am very excited to announce that I incorporated Epi-interactive on October 8th. Watch this space – over the next couple of weeks the website will get a little “makeover” and I will also present a new project I have been working on over the last months. All things are going quite well at the moment – with my focus being on preparing for the upcoming GEOVET conference. I will be co-facilitating a workshop on combining molecular and spatial tools as well as presenting a senior paper, which uses a combination of epidemiological, spatial and molecular tools to assess the effect of interventions.

With my MVM/MPH course live at the moment busy has got another dimension. It is a great experience to teach in an online environment and we have quite a few motivated and talented students in the program. Three more weeks to go and after the course has finished things should quiet down a little. I will then need to focus for a while on my research activities as well as prepare my workshop and presentation for the upcoming GEOVET conference in Sydney. My mEpiWorks colleagues Nigel French and Andres Perez and I will be teaching a course on the application of molecular tools in spatial epidemiology (click here for the flyer). I believe this is a highly promising approach to further our understanding of the epidemiology of infectious diseases.

Since July 19th, I am employed as Senior Lecturer (Epidemiology) at the EpiCentre, Massey University. I will work in this role three days a week and focus on contributing to the EpiCentre’s “One Health” in Epidemiology project. This is a veterinary and medical capability development programme in epidemiology and biosecurity for the South Asia Region, East Asia and Pacific and Central Asia Regions. I have already contracted my services to this project over the last months and am currently coordinating the course on disease surveillance and diagnostic tests. In addition to this position I will continue my involvement with Nigel French’s group at Massey University (mEpiLab) for further research activities in veterinary public health and molecular epidemiology.