Born in Barcelona, Spain, in 1968, obtained his PhD in Biology at University of Alcalá (Madrid) in 1995. After a postdoctoral period at Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris, France), came back to Madrid to work atthe National Museum of Natural Sciences ascribed to the Department of Evolutionary Ecology. Dr. Merino is still working at the Museum, an institute of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) as Professor of Research. He was the Director of the Museum during eight years. Author of more than 200 scientific publications his work is centred in the study of host-parasite interactions in wild animals, especially birds. He collaborates with researchers all over the world in studies covering species from Antarctic to Arctic including South America, Africa and Europe.

PhD Agata Kokocińska - ethologist, zoopsychologist and animal trainer. By education, she holds an engineering degree in Breeding Small Working Animals and Pets, completed her Master’s Course in Wild Animals Specialty at the Faculty of Animal Science at WULS and is a special educator (Faculty of Pedagogy at the University of Maria Grzegorzewska in Warsaw). She did a PhD at the Institute of Animal Behaviour at the Institute of Genetics and Animal Breeding at the Polish Academy of Science. Her PhD thesis concerns olfactory sense and its uses, among others, for the diagnostics of cancer. Currently, she is a scientist and academic lecturer at the University of Life Sciences in Lublin (Department of Animal Therapy and Animal Psychology). She has completed a lot of courses and trainings in canine, feline and other species behaviour. She is a Professional Animal Trainer certified by BIAZA. She is particularly interested in the questions of animal temper and personality as well as emotional life of animals. She is a lecturer at the Faculty of Animal Science and at Open University at WULS. She has published a book titled Zootherapy with Elements of Ethology. A member of Warsaw Division of Polish Society of Animal Production, Polish Ethological Society, Polish Laboratory Animal Science Association PolLASA and International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants IAABC. She likes to tirelessly update her skills attending courses and workshops and following new scientific publications.

She is currently conducting research into dog training methods to detect disease carriers and dogs that signal outbreaks of disease in humans. She cooperates with Polish services, giving lectures on dog behavior and olfactory work, and conducts behavioral therapies for service dogs.

The founder and project manager of the DDD Project – Disease Detecting Dog Project, whose main goal is to create a specialized training center that prepares dogs to detect samples from sick people (cancer, diabetes, and others), but also to signal disease attacks to make life easier for people struggling with diabetes and epilepsy, as well as other diseases. Properly trained dogs, in addition to signaling the arrival of an attack (alert dog), can also be taught to provide basic assistance during and immediately after an attack (reponse dog), and dogs seeking the smell of the disease – can be used, among others. in times of epidemic, in order to rapidly screen people who are a potential carrier of the disease (e.g. coronavirus causing COVID-19).

José Ribamar Felipe Marques, ZOOTECNISTA, Brazilian, researcher at Embrapa Amazônia Oriental, PhD in Genetics (1991) - UNESP – BO. Post Doctorate in Genetics and Specialist in Conservation of Zoogenetic Resources (2005 - 2006) – UCO – ES. Winner of Prof. Otávio Domingues of the Zootecnia - CFMVZ 2010. He was awarded Zootechnician of the Year in the state of Pará, in 2007. He works with sustainable animal production systems, with emphasis on family dairy buffalo farming on the Marajó island, which extends to the state of Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon. It has expertise in Projects and Programs in this Theme, winning the V Agropará Award 2019, in the Paraense Program for the Promotion of Agribusiness, for the development and fight against hunger, in one of the regions with the lowest HDI in Brazil, Marajó, in the Amazon. Leads the Program for the Improvement of Dairy Buffalo Family Livestock in the State of Pará - Promebull - SEG. 22.13.06.023.00.00 of Embrapa. Coordinated the Brazilian Mission in Italy and Bulgaria aiming at the genetic improvement of Buffaloes, as well as the Promebull Pará Mission, in India, for Technical Scientific Exchange and Genetic Improvement of Buffaloes with ICAR and some Indian States. He considers Hunger and Refugees as the great challenges of the moment that can be urgently solved in a simple and easy way, by science working for food production, with peace and goodwill among all peoples, but he thinks that there must be a change in the order world, where the Planet's Poor Countries can assume the management of food production, in an effective fight against hunger.

Dr Barbara Padalino graduated in Veterinary Medicine at the University of Bari (Italy) in 2002 and in 2017 completed her PhD entitled “Transportation of horses and the implications for health and welfare” at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is currently an Associate Professor of Animal Science at the University of Bologna, Italy, a member of the Animal health and welfare panel of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and a Diplomate of the European College in Animal welfare, ethics and law. She has written more than 200 publications in peer-reviewed international journals and conference proceedings on animal health and welfare. She is currently leading several research projects aiming at enhancing animal health and welfare worldwide

Dr. Eugene D. Janzen received his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M.) in 1972 from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Dr. Janzen spent three years practicing in northeastern Alberta before returning to the Western College of Veterinary Medicine on an Alberta-sponsored fellowship to complete a post- graduate degree with Dr O.M. Radostits. Dr. Janzen received an M.V.S. degree from the University of Melbourne, Australia in 1977 working with Professors Doug Blood and Roger Morris. In 1977, he accepted a position with the Ambulatory Clinic at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. In this position, Dr. Janzen spent his time working with a general interest in beef cattle medicine. Dr. Janzen became associated with Feedlot Health Management Services in 2002. In 2005, Dr. Janzen began working with Canada’s newest veterinary medicine program with the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (UCVM), that accepted its’ first class of students in September 2008. Dr. Janzen recently transitioned from the 10-year position of UCVM’s Associate Dean of Clinical Practice, Community Partnerships and now continues at the UCVM as a Professor Emeritus in the Production Animal Health. Department. His main areas of research or interest are mitigation of painful cattle procedures, validation of the digital necropsy diagnostics, management of lameness in feedlot cattle and investigation of referred disease problems in the western Canadian community.

Professor Laurie Markeris a conservation biologist and the Founder and Executive Director of Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF). Growing up on a backyard farm, Marker’s passion is horseback riding, as well as dairy goats and dogs. As one of the world’s leading cheetah experts, she began working with cheetahs in 1974 in Oregon’s Wildlife Safari where she was the Director of the Veterinary Clinic. In 1977 she initiated pioneeringresearch oncheetahs in Namibia and in 1982, her collaborative research helped identify the species’ lack of genetic diversity.In 1990, Marker left her role as Executive Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s NOAHS (New Opportunities in Animal Health Sciences) Center,setting up the non-profit CCF and relocated to Namibia, working with livestock farmers who were killing hundreds of cheetahs annually as a perceived threat to their livestock. This set the stage for her research into cheetah biology, ecology, and conservation strategies and integrated livestock, wildlife, and rangeland management techniques to mitigate conflict. At CCF Namibia’s Research and Education Centre, Marker has developed a breeding program for livestock guarding dogs to protect livestock along with a goat dairy,Model Farm, Veterinary Clinic and Genetics Laboratory. In 2017, Dr. Marker set up a field base and veterinary clinic in Somaliland to care for confiscated cheetah cubs from the illegal wildlife trade and has set up programs in the Horn of Africa to try to stop the trade. Dr. Marker holds a DPhil in Zoology from University of Oxford and is an A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. Shehas more than 120 peer-reviewed scientific papers and books on cheetah. Marker’s many awards including Lowell Thomas Award in 2010 and the President’s Award for Conservation in 2020 from the Explorer’s Club, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement (2010), the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Pioneer Award (2015) and a Hero for the Planet from Time Magazine.

Dr. Benavides-Montaño Javier Antonio is an Associate Professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNAL), working in undergrad and graduate courses offering Parasitology, Preventive Medicine, Immunology, and Infectious diseases. He graduated in 1999 from DVM and Animal Production Science at the Universidad de Caldas. He obtained a Master’s Education Diploma from the Universidad de Manizales, Caldas-Colombia, in 2004 and continued his master’s in Veterinary Science at the Universidad Federal de Viçosa- Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 2006. In 2008 he got a position at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia as a Professor in Parasitology. He earnedFulbright Scholarship in 2011 and finish his Ph.D. in Veterinary Science working in the Immunology and Infectious Disease Program at the Paul G Allen School for Global Animal Health– at Washington State University USA in 2017. His main research activities are in the field of Preventive Medicine, Parasitology, and Infectious diseases. He has developed different studies on different parasites. Recently he focused on wild and remerging conditions with zoonotic potential and parasites that affect humans and animals.He got university funding to fortify his Lab in Parasitology/Immunology and Infectious Diseases (PARINEI) to prevent and reduce animal and human disease impact on production systems and public health by considering one health approach. In 2019 their team got 2.000.000.000 to get a new Confocal Microscopy and the Microscopy Center at the UNAL Palmira. He is Editorial Board and Academic Editor in PLOS ONE and Acta Agronomica.

Dr Zwane Avhashoni, is a Lab Director Molecular Genetics and Biobank Operations at 54gene. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Microbiology and Biochemistry at the University of Venda, South Africa in 2004, and her PhD in Animal Science (Genomics) from the University of Pretoria in 2018, with Professor Este van Marle-Koster (University of Pretoria), Professor Azwihangwisi Maiwashe (Agricultural Research Council) and Professor Jerry Taylor (University of Missouri, USA), and at the same time working as a PhD candidate at the Agricultural Research Council-Animal Production (ARC-AP) since 2013. Her PhD work focused on SNP discovery in South African indigenous beef cattle, a first work that identified novel variants in indigenous cattle using whole genome sequencing. This work won the best presentation in the South African Society of Animal Science conference in 2016.

After completing her PhD, Dr Zwane acquired a position as a Researcher at the ARC- AP, Animal Breeding and Genetics, and worked for 5 years. During that time, she secured research funding of over R7M to develop capacity in genomics and bioinformatics and appointed MSc and PhD students. She also worked as a Biobank coordinator in conserving and preserving livestock biospecimes in the same department. Her work mainly focused on genotyping and sequencing of indigenous livestock for population studies and to identify important markers for breeding. During this time Dr Zwane collaborated with Dr Tomas Klingstrom and Prof Erik Bongcam-Rudloff from Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences to develop genomics workflow for big data analysis and to build reference genomes/breed maps for indigenous cattle, and also Dr Abdulfatai Tijjani from The Jackson Laboratory, USA on genomics research and bioinformatics.

In 2022, Dr Zwane accepted a position as a Lab Director at 54gene, to work on genotyping and sequencing of clinical samples to identify markers for diagnostics and for drug discovery. She was also involved in biobank operations in preserving biospecimens for research and future use. The motivation to move to 54gene was to contribute to generating the data on African populations for the betterment of African healthcare. This is because only small amount of data (about 3%) from African populations is included into current therapeutics and drug developments and innovations, and hence the burden of diseases in Africa remains a major problem. Most common diseases still do not have cures and breaking the grounds on these biases will improve healthcare in African populations. In her role Dr Zwane manages all the genotyping and sequencing as well as biobanking operations to ensure efficient data generation and analysis, and also contributes to research on communicable and noncommunicable diseases.

Dr Zwane is a member of South African Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, since 2012, South African Genetics Society since 2013, the International Society for Biological and Environmental Biorepositories (ISBER) since 2014, a member of South African Society for Animal Genetics since 2018, as well as a member of South African Society of Animal Science. She serves/d on committees such as the ISBER Member Relations Committee, Water Research Project Reference Group (Water Research Committee on Covid-19 water research), FAnGR Advisory Committee (DALRRD), ARC Research Committee, and also served as Board of editors in journals such as Animal Breeding and Genetics, PlosOne, African Journal of Agricultural Research, 3Biotech and Animals Journals. Dr Zwane is the member of South African Council of Natural Scientific Professions (SACNASP) and have published journals in local and international platforms.

As a visitant fellow at Columbia Genome Center in New York City, I beganstudiesfocusingon a signalingpathwayinvolving a gene Sonic hedgehog (Shh). Withcolleaguesat Columbia, I conductedseveralexperimentsonShhexpressionandregulationofthedopamine system, and these investigations involved the micegeneticlines (CRE-LOX system).

At GENSAT Project Rockefeller University, I was a Director of the Histology core. The goal was to speed up discovery and research in hundreds of cell subtypes in the brain by making cell-specific transgenic mouse lines accessible to the scientific community world wide.

Later, at Mary Hynes´slab, I used transgenicmice and the translating ribosome affinity purification (TRAP) technique toi nvestigate the development of dopamine rgicneurons and striatum.

My research explores the interplay between cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment and focuses on the role of the Shhpath way implicated in medulloblastoma and its interactions with astrocytes.

I am Muhzina Shajid Pyari, a PhD candidate in the Peter Pongracz lab at Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, expected to graduate in 2023. I am interested to know more about human-animal interaction, animal-animal interaction and socio-cognitive skills in companion animals and free-ranging animals. Currently I am trying to understand and contribute more to cat research. My recent studies focus on predatory prey behaviour in companion cats and problem solving skills in cats vs dogs under social and non-social stimului.

Emmanuel Ncube is a Zimbabwean nationality who has completed his first degree in Wildlife Ecology and Consideration at Chinhoyi University of Technology, Zimbabwe. He is currently working as a senior wildlife researcher/ monitor. He has contributed at least one research paper to the wildlife research industry. He interested in the conservation of wild animals.

Graduated in Veterinary (2009). Master's degree in Science in veterinary research ( 2011) at the Complutense University of Madrid and Master´s degree in Teacher Training ( 2017) at the Internacional University of Rioja (Spain)
She began her career in several veterinary clinics and in the public administration as a collaborating inspector.
Adriana completed her studies with several stays and courses in Africa due to her interest in wildlife.
She is developing her PhD studies at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Cáceres with the team of Genetics and Animal Breeding, with Dr. Jose Luis Ferandez-Garcia. Her special interests include wildlife epidemiology and conservation.
Currently she combines her research projects with teaching at the Alfonso X el Sabio University in the Health area in the subjects of Epidemiology, zoonosis, infectious diseases and preventive medicine.