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Cynthia Baldwin
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USDA Beltsville Area Distinquished Lecture Series

"Developing Veterinary Vaccines: The Role of the Immunological Toolkit"

JCynthia L. Baldwin

 

Cynthia L. Baldwin

Professor of Microbiology
Department of Veterinary & Animal Sciences
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Massachusetts

Building 003 Auditorium
March 15, 2007
10:30 AM



Dr. Baldwin is a recognized authority in the field of veterinary immunology. She received her Ph.D. in Immunology from Cornell University in 1983 after which she spent 7 years in Nairobi, Kenya at the International Laboratory on Research on Animal Diseases (ILRAD). Subsequently she was an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology at The Ohio State University and, since 1994, at the University of Massachusetts where she achieved the rank of full professor in 2000. In 2002, she was named the Distinguished Veterinary Immunologist by the American Association of Veterinary Immunologists, an international award made annually. Her area of scholarship is cellular immunology, particularly with regard to immunity to intracellular microbial pathogens. Her career has been devoted to dissecting the protective immune response to these organisms with a view towards vaccine development. In this endeavor, her research includes immune responses to the gram negative bacterium Brucella abortus, classified now as a Select Agent because of its potential as a biowarfare agent, the protozoan parasite Theileria parva, which has a significant impact on food supply in Africa, and the spirochete Leptospira. All are important pathogens of cattle, and Brucella and Leptospira zoonotically infect humans.

Currently Dr. Baldwin is serving as the lead scientist for the "US Veterinary Immune Reagent Network." This is USDA-CSREES-funded consortium of scientists and represents a broad community plan to systematically address the immunological reagent gap for the veterinary immunology research community. These reagents are the tools needed to both understand vaccine efficacy as well as immunopathology of important diseases in ruminants, swine, poultry, horses and fish. Moreover the reagents themselves will be the tools needed for strategic intervention of disease outbreak, in some cases, or to develop other countermeasures.

Dr. Baldwin is currently editor-in-chief for the Americas for the journal Veterinary Immunology and Immunopathology. She served as president of the American Association of Veterinary Immunolgists in 2001 and of the international organization of Brucellosis Research workers in 1997. She has been a member of the Veterinary Immunology Committee of both the American Association of Immunologists and the International Union of Immunology Societies. She has been a member of many peer-review panels for the NIH, USDA-NRI, USDA-CSREES and for on-site reviews of the armed forces vaccine development programs and USDA-ARS research.