"I always loved animals and from a young age dreamt of becoming a zoo veterinarian," Priscilla says. "But the day-to-day routine of a veterinary clinician didn't appeal to me. Half-way through vet school at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, in my homeland of Brazil, I started an internship at its animal virology lab and it blew my mind."
Since then Priscilla has worked as a research associate at Iowa State University, USA, while pursuing her PhD, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh, UK. When she relocated to Australia in 2016 for a research fellowship at UNE she found herself in the heart of an agricultural district, where she could continue her research into infectious livestock diseases and have direct contact with the producers - and animals - she was dedicated to helping.
"To me, undertaking an internship is essential to having a better understanding of what it's like to work in your chosen field, since your idea of it might not match reality, such as my dream of being a zoo vet."
Priscilla was recently awarded a $425,900 Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award to research the deadly laryngotracheitis (ILTV) in chickens and how it can be controlled.
