New Prague, MN (September 3, 2024) – The National Mastitis Council (NMC) selected Ridwan Adesola, University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo.; José Augusto Ferronatto, Penn State University, University Park, Pa.; Ana Beatriz Montevecchio Bernardino, University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla.; Alexandre Rico Fernandez, University of California-Davis, Davis, Calif.; Matías Goddard, Universidad Austral de Chile, Valdivia, Chile; and Gregory Rota, University of Ghent and University of Liège, Belgium, as the global organization’s 2025 Scholars. These graduate students won an expense-paid trip to attend the 64th NMC Annual Meeting, set for Jan. 27-30, in Charlotte, N.C. The NMC Scholars program strives to support the development of future udder health, milking management and milk quality specialists.
Adesola, who holds a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, embarked on his University of Missouri journey by participating in a summer veterinary research scholars’ program, which involved working in a university laboratory. His current research focuses on molecular characterization of non-aureus staphylococcal and mammaliicoccal species, helping to explore methods to differentiate strains. Adesola shared that witnessing children, from the “Fulani” ethnic group, drinking raw milk directly from cows’ teats inspired him to study milk quality and food safety.
Ferronatto developed a passion for cows while growing up on his parents’ farm. He earned a veterinary medicine degree and did internships in biology and immunology. Ferronatto earned an MBA in agribusiness at the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo, Brazil, where he worked on communication failures between veterinarians and farmers and how this impacts mastitis rates. Now a visiting researcher at Penn State University, Ferronatto is also a University of São Paulo PhD candidate. His research focuses on bovine mastitis and the bovine milk microbiome – an emerging area that challenges and expands traditional views on the disease.
Montevecchio earned her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from Universidade Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho, Botucatu-Brazil. Currently a PhD candidate, Montevecchio’s research focuses on improving the welfare of cows suffering from mastitis. She is investigating welfare implications of administering a transdermal non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) to cows challenged with E. coli intramammarily. By closely monitoring behavioral responses, such as lying time, activity and rumination, alongside health indicators, like rectal temperature and mastitis severity, the study seeks to understand the impact of NSAID on cow well-being.
Rico, a veterinarian from Spain, completed the UC-Davis Master of Preventive Veterinary Medicine program and is currently a graduate student in the Graduate Group in Epidemiology. His research broadens the understanding of decision making in implementing selective treatment of clinical mastitis, using a stochastic partial budget analysis with Monte Carlo simulation. Involved in dairy production all his life, he has viewed the dairy industry as a farmer, practitioner, researcher, academic and consumer. With a goal of gaining experience in the United States, Rico earned an opportunity to work at DairyExperts in Tulare, Calif., under the mentorship of Alfonso Lago.
For his undergraduate thesis, Goddard investigated Enterococcus bacteria as agents of subclinical mastitis in dairy farms within the Valdivia, Chile region. This experience included hands-on field sample collection, which allowed him to observe the impact of mastitis on dairy producers and animal welfare. Goddard’s master’s degree program in microbiology focuses on diagnosing mammary pathogens. With a significant rise in Mycoplasma bovis outbreaks on area dairy farms, Goddard is studying the genetic diversity of Mycoplasma bovis strains isolated from cases of bovine mastitis and bovine respiratory disease in Chilean dairy farms.
A veterinarian and PhD candidate, Rota’s research investigates the potential impact of four well-studied bovine-associated non-aureus Staphylococcus isolates, which are known for their intriguing in vitro and in vivo traits. The study aims to understand how these isolates modulate virulence expression in Staph. aureus and Streptococcus uberis, and how they affect the immune response of bovine mammary epithelial cells when these bacteria coexist in the same niche. Besides studying in Belgium, Rota went to school at the Vetsuisse Faculty in Bern, Switzerland, following an intensive traineeship in ruminant health.
National Mastitis Council is a non-profit professional organization devoted to reducing mastitis and enhancing milk quality. NMC promotes research and provides science-based information to the dairy industry on udder health, milking management, milk quality, animal welfare and food safety. Founded in 1961, NMC has about 1,000 members in more than 40 countries throughout the world.
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Photographs available upon request.
