Invited Speakers

Prof. Sam Abraham -  grew up in Kerala, in the south west of India. In 2006, Sam received his BSc, in Zoology from Mahatma Gandhi University in Kerala. Shortly after, he moved to Australia in pursuit of higher education and joined the University of Wollongong to undertake a Masters in Biotechnology. Subsequently, he completed a PhD in Micro and Molecular Biology from the University of Wollongong (2012) undertaking research at the Elizabeth Macarthur Agricultural Research Institute, New South Wales Department of Primary Industries. In 2012, Sam moved to the University of Adelaide, to undertake a post-doctoral research fellowship in Antimicrobial Resistance with A/Prof. Darren Trott. Along with A/Prof. Trott, he established the First National Network on Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance in Australian Animals. In 2015, he joined Murdoch University as an academic lecturer in microbiology.

Prof. Rami Dalloul - was born in Lebanon and received his BS and MS from the American University of Beirut. He joined John Doerr’s program at the University of Maryland and received his PhD in poultry immunology. After completing postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Maryland and US Department of Agriculture–Beltsville, Dalloul joined the faculty of the Department of Animal and Poultry Sciences at Virginia Tech with research focus on host–pathogen interactions and poultry immunology. He also serves as a leading member for the turkey genome sequencing project, of which the draft sequence was published in late 2010. His research focuses on understanding the immunobiology of the host protective immunity, especially in response to enteric pathogens and mucosal microbes.

Prof. Brian Fairchild - received his PhD in Physiology from North Carolina State University.  He has been a member of the faculty of the Department of Poultry Science at the University of Georgia for 22 years where he is a professor and extension poultry scientist working in poultry house management.  He has a 85% Extension, 10% teaching and 5% service appointment.  He co-teaches the Advanced Poultry Management course.  His area of focus for research and extension is broiler house environmental control, energy conservation, physiology and management. Recent projects focus on factors affecting broiler body temperature, broiler water consumption, broiler light programs and poultry house moisture control.  Brian travels extensively both domestically and internationally providing seminars on the principles of broiler management and poultry house environmental control. He co-coordinates two ventilation workshops each year that have both national and international attendees.  Much of the work that he has done in the area of poultry house environmental control and energy conservation is available at poultryventilation.com where there are over 350 newsletters.  He is currently serving as the editor in chief for the Journal of Applied Poultry Research and president of the Poultry Science Association.

Emer. Prof. Mike Gidley -  is Director of the Centre for Nutrition and Food Sciences (CNAFS) at the University of Queensland, Australia. The Centre is part of the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) in conjunction with the Queensland Government. Prof Gidley's research is focussed on structure – function relationships in biopolymer assemblies such as starch granules and plant cell walls. This has led to the detailed characterisation of starch and dietary fibre digestion/fermentation in vitro and in vivo, with the understanding generated leading to opportunities for optimising nutritional value of foods and feeds. He is also a Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Plant Cell Walls.

Prof. Filip van Immerseel -  ris Master in Bio-engineering Sciences (1999) and Master in Laboratory Animal Sciences (2004) and received a PhD in Veterinary Medical Sciences in 2004, studying environmental triggers in the gut that influence Salmonella invasion. After a post-doc period, he was appointed as Research Professor by Ghent University in 2008. Currently he is Full Professor at the Department of Pathobiology, Pharmacology and Zoological Medicine at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Ghent University in Belgium and is head of a research group that studies host-bacterium interactions in the gut. Filip Van Immerseel currently has more than 230 scientific papers in international peer-reviewed journals, has written book chapters and edited books on Salmonella and Clostridium perfringens and is a well-known speaker at international events. He is editor of the journal Avian Pathology and involved in many international collaborative research networks, has a dozen patents and has out-licensed multiple gut health solutions to companies. The general approach is always to study host-pathogen or host-bacterium interactions and to collect scientific data on mechanisms of a) the pathogenesis of diseases or b) the protective effects of bacterial strains and bacterial metabolites on gut homeostasis. These data can then be used for rational development of control measures to control pathogen colonization or intestinal disease, including vaccines, feed additives and diagnostic tools.