Prof Neil Sargison

Personal Chair of Farm Animal Practice

Biography

Background

Neil Sargison is Professor of Farm Animal Practice at the R(D)SVS.  He qualified with BA and VetMB degrees from Cambridge University and its Veterinary School in 1984 and has subsequently gained substantial practical experience of farm animal veterinary practice, in particular working with beef cattle and small ruminants in the north east of Scotland, New Zealand and Midlothian.  He has developed a specialist interest in the subject of small ruminant health and production.

Neil Sargison has interests in planned ruminant livestock health and production and has published many clinically-relevant papers and articles in this field.  He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons on the basis of a thesis describing the importance of reticular groove closure to anthelmintic drug pharmacokinetics, and holds the RCVS Diploma in Sheep Health and Production, partly based on a dissertation describing clinical studies of sheep scab. He is vice president of the European College of Small Ruminant Health Management (proposed as President from May 2017) and a former president of the Sheep Veterinary Society special interest division of the British Veterinary Association.  He is the Scientific organiser of the 9th International Sheep Veterinary Congress, May 2017.  He has written a textbook, 'Sheep Flock Health - A Planned Approach', which outlines a practical and rational approach to the diagnosis and management of sheep diseaes, and has contributed papers to other sheep, cattle, animal welfare and veterinary parasitology textbooks.

Neil Sargison's principal research interests and primary undergraduate teaching responsibilities are in the field of veterinary parasitology, due to the fact that parasitic diseases are amongst the most important production limiting problems of ruminant livestock, and he has published widely in this field.  He was awarded a PhD in 2009 by the University of Edinburgh for studies of anthelmintic resistance in sheep nematode parasites.  Current projects include: the use of deep amplicon sequencing approaches to study nematode parasite diversity and co-infections; study of the performance of different sheep breeds and selected lines in a harsh hill environment; studies of the changing epidemiology of fluke parasites; study of the population genetics of aleles conferring resistance to anthelmintic drugs in nematode parasites; Haemonchus contortus and Teladorsagia circumcincta genomics; and development of train-the-trainer livestock helath education in poor agricultural economies.

Responsibilities & affiliations

AB2 Parasitology

BVM&S and postgraduate supervision

Postdoc on LoLa grant

Current research interests

Use of deep amplicon sequencing approaches to study nematode parasite diversity and co-infections. Performance of different sheep breeds and selected lines in a harsh hill environment. Changing epidemiology of trematode parasites. Population genetics of anthelmintic resistance in nematodes. Haemonchus contotus and Teladorsagia circumcincta genomics. Train-the-trainer livestock health education.

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