Professor Stephen (Steve) Walkden-Brown
Professor in Animal Health and Veterinary Science , Animal Health and Veterinary Sciences - School of Environmental and Rural Science
Biography
Steve's teaching and research centre on animal health and disease control in animal production systems in Australia and overseas. He worked as a government field veterinarian in Fiji prior to his academic career and has or has had major international projects in India, Laos and Vietnam. He has special interests in small ruminant production systems and the integrated control of gastrointestinal parasite infections in such systems. He also has a longstanding research interest in the diagnosis and control of major viral diseases in chickens and the potential of poultry dust as population level sample material for molecular diagnosis and monitoring of a wide range of infectious disease organisms in chickens. Steve has over 400 scientific publications and reports including authorship on some 140 refereed original scientific journal papers. He has supervised or co-supervised 33 PhD, 11 research masters and 23 honours students to completion and currently leads an active group of researchers and HDR students.
Qualifications
BVSc (Hons1), PhD (Qld)
Teaching Areas
Teaching interests:
- Animal health in all species, with a particular emphasis on the epidemiology of disease occurrence. My teaching includes elements of basic veterinary immunology, parasitology, microbiology, epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis and disease control.
- Small ruminant production. I am interested in sheep/goat production systems worldwide and have been involved in research into and under a range of such systems.
- I also have a background in sheep/goat reproduction and continue to enjoy teaching in this area. I am particularly interested in the evolution of reproductive seasonality and the diversity of reproductive strategies employed by sheep and goats.
Primary Research Area/s
Animal Health and Diseases; Livestock productionResearch Interests
Research Interests:
In the past few years my main research interests and areas of active work have included:
- Molecular diagnosis, epidemiology and control of Marek's disease in chickens. I am particularly interested in the ongoing evolution in virulence of the Marek's disease virus and the factors driving this.
- Integrated parasite management (IPM) in sheep. The sustainable management of parasites, particularly gastro-intestinal nematode (worm) infections is complex challenge given the widespread resistance to anthelmintic chemicals amongst sheep worms and the large part of the lifecycle spent in the environment rather than in the host. Understanding the free-living ecology of the main parasites is a key component of developing effective IPM.
- Improved sheep meat production systems in India, including utilisation of the Booroola fecundity gene (FecB) to improved reproductive rate in Indian native breeds of sheep.
- Measurement of the infective virus status of chicken litter and methods for reducing viral pathogen load in litter between batches of broilers.
Speciality Areas:
Animal health esp.
- Epidemiology and control of parasites of small ruminants
- Epidemiology and control of viral diseases of poultry
- Diagnostics
Sheep and goat production
Sheep and goat reproduction
