In animal health, welfare and behaviour, we include work across the veterinary and life sciences sectors. This might relate to farm or companion animal welfare, or the impacts of global change on animal populations including how anthropogenic pollutants and global change directly impact animal behaviour, and how living systems cope with human influence.
This VC Fellowship is a special award for future leaders in veterinary sciences. We welcome applications within any of the following strategic areas:
Area 1 - Automated Animal Health and Welfare Assessment
Accurate monitoring of animal health and welfare, and of how animals interact with their environments, is more important than ever to satisfy societal demands for high welfare practices. This fellowship offers the opportunity to develop novel and automated measures of animal welfare and health by drawing on a range of resources including an instrumented dairy unit (Bristol Veterinary School (BVS)) and instrumented extensive grazing systems (BBSRC North Wyke Farm Platform), both of which can generate 24/7 behavioural, nutritional, and environmental data on individual animals, an animal-dedicated 3T MRI facility, and a Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock (CIEL) instrumented poultry unit (both on-site at BVS). The fellow will be able to join an existing collaborative network including welfare and behaviour scientists, neuroscientists, data and computer scientists, nutritionists, veterinarians, population health experts, and economists.
Area 2 – Fundamental Behaviour Underpinning Animal Welfare
BVS researchers have played an important role in generating new information about animal perceptions, motivations, affective, empathic and cognitive abilities, social behaviour, choice and decision-making, and in pioneering novel measures of animal affective states and welfare. Exciting prospects for further advances in these areas have been opened up by a range of new data collection and analysis methods in the behavioural, cognitive, and neurosciences. This fellowship offers opportunities to use these new approaches and well-designed experimental studies to better understand how animals perceive their physical and social surroundings, what they want and don’t want, how they are affected by housing and husbandry, and how this impacts on their health, welfare and value to humans.
Area 3 – Understanding and manipulating microbiomes and epigenomes
Epigenetics, particularly that part which is linked to early life nutrition and acquisition of microbiomes is a key determinant of productivity, health and disease in humans and animals. Fundamental research will need to dissect and understand animal microbiomes as ecosystems, while applied research will identify key, marker organisms whose abundance is linked to health and disease. Together, these approaches will indicate rational target pathways for manipulating animal and human microbiomes towards productivity and health. Building on research expertise in the School and Faculty, this fellowship offers the opportunity to establish the successful candidate as a leader in this field.
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Got a question?
If you have a question about the Vice-Chancellor's Fellowships please email us at vc-fellowships@bristol.ac.uk.