Co-Principal investigators

Cheryl Waldner is a professor at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine (WCVM), University of Saskatchewan. Her beef cattle research examines animal health and productivity, including antimicrobial use (AMU) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Her broad transdisciplinary research encompasses environmental and infectious disease epidemiology in humans and animals, including a number of projects with social science focus. She co-chairs the AMR Research & Innovation Task Group for the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) Pan-Canadian AMR Framework & Action Plan.
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Simon Otto is a veterinary epidemiologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta School of Public Health. He has extensive scientific and policy development experience in AMR. His research ranges from quantitative modeling of AMR surveillance data to AMR in cattle and development of antimicrobial stewardship policy. He co-chairs the Infection Prevention & Control Task Group for the PHAC Pan-Canadian AMR Framework and Action Plan.
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Co-Investigators

Anatoliy Trokhymchuk is Chief Scientific Officer for Prairie Diagnostic Services, western Canada’s largest regional diagnostic lab for animal health. He brings well-rounded experience in veterinary epidemiology, laboratory information management systems, and laboratory business development.

Matthew Links is an Assistant Professor, UofS College of Agriculture. He explores use and analysis of nanopore sequencing data. He created a visualization platform for nanopore data and a tool for real-time infection alerting, based on detecting user-specified levels of microbes in a sequencing run. He is analyzing nanopore signal data with wavelets to reduce error rates by de-noising and segmenting nanopore data before applying machine learning for base calling.

Paul Stothard is a Professor of genomics and bioinformatics, UofA Department of Agricultural Food & Nutritional Science. He brings a wealth of expertise in software and bioinformatic pipeline development.
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Tim McAllister is the Principal Research Scientist at the Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) Lethbridge Research & Development Centre. He will further develop their RPA test for AMR in BRD pathogens and has conducted a number of genomic and metagenomic studies related to BRD.

Janet Hill is Professor and Head in Veterinary Microbiology, UofS WCVM. She has 20 years of experience in applying DNA sequencing to study animal-associated microbiomes. She led development of cpn60-based methodologies for detecting, identifying and quantifying microbial species. She established cpnDB, a reference database of chaperonin sequences. 
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John Campbell is a Professor in Large Animal Clinical Sciences, UofS WCVM. He studies health of production animals and infectious diseases of beef cattle, including AMR. He brings extensive experience in beef feedlot practice and research.

Murray Jelinski devoted most of his working career to private veterinary practice and roles in the veterinary pharmaceutical industry. In 2006, he became Chair in Food Animal Health & Production Medicine, UofS WCVM. His research interests are lameness and respiratory disease in western Canadian feedlot cattle, with an emphasis on the role of M. bovis within the BRD complex.

Nathan Erickson is an Assistant Professor in Large Animal Clinical Sciences, UofS WCVM. He studies vaccination strategies to control BRD and prudent AMU in beef cattle. He brings experience in feedlot veterinary practice and key links to the Canadian beef industry and veterinarians. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners – Beef Cattle.

Sheryl Gow is a veterinary epidemiologist with the PHAC Canadian Integrated Program for Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance (CIPARS). CIPARS collects, analyses and communicates trends in AMU and in AMR for select bacteria from humans, animals and retail meat across Canada. She brings extensive experience in beef feedlot research related to AMR and AMU. She recently developed a framework for national surveillance of AMU and AMR in feedlot cattle.

Henry An is an Associate Professor, UofA Department of Resource Economics & Environmental Sociology. He is an agricultural economist interested in adoption of agricultural technologies and resulting economic effects. His current research includes investigating implementation of genomic information-sharing to improve productivity in the beef sector.

Xiaoli Fan is an Assistant Professor, UofA Department of Resource Economics & Environmental Sociology. She is an agricultural economist with expertise in consumer demand and farm-level optimization and bioeconomic modeling.
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Rahat Zaheer is a biologist, AAFC Lethbridge Research & Development Centre. Using molecular, genomic and metagenomic approaches, she investigates AMR in BRD pathogens and other livestock-associated bacteria posing direct or indirect threats to human health.

Yanyun Huang is the Chief Executive Officer of Prairie Diagnostic Services. He is certified by the American College of Veterinary Pathologists and is explores roles of unconventional viruses in BRD in Canadian beef cattle using high-throughput sequencing.