Preliminary Scientific Programme

High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI)

Margarida Henriques (INIAV)

Margarida Henriques Mourão is a senior researcher with a PhD in Biotechnology and over 20 years of experience in veterinary virology and molecular diagnostics. Based at the National Reference Laboratory (INIAV), she works on diagnosis, surveillance, molecular characterization, and phylogenetic analysis of animal and zoonotic viruses, within national and European disease monitoring programs.

Orcid-0000-0003-1835-3077

High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI)

Javier Asín Ros (UC Davis)

Dr. Javier Asín Ros received his Veterinary Medicine Degree and PhD from the University of Zaragoza, Spain, and is a diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Pathologists. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of California, Davis. He primarily serves as a diagnostic pathologist at the San Bernardino branch of the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System, the state’s veterinary diagnostic laboratory network. His primary interests are infectious diseases of multiple species, and since 2022 he has participated in diagnostic investigations of highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks in California.

Spatial Omics in Pathology

Eduardo Chicano Gálvez (IMIBIC)

Eduardo Chicano Gálvez, PhD, is Head of the Mass Spectrometry and Molecular Imaging Unit at IMIBIC (Spain). His work focuses on spatial omics using mass spectrometry imaging (MS-Imaging) to map the molecular composition of tissues with high spatial resolution. His research bridges analytical chemistry, biochemistry, pathology, and bioinformatics, enabling the visualization of proteins, lipids, and metabolites directly within histological sections. Dr. Chicano is particularly interested in translating MS-Imaging into practical applications for pathology, providing new molecular insights that complement conventional histopathology and support biomarker discovery and disease characterization. Through his work, he aims to make spatial omics technologies accessible to pathologists and to promote their integration into research and future diagnostic workflows

Orcid-0000-0002-9481-9628

African Swine Fever (ASF)

Librado Carrasco Otero (UCO)

A graduate and PhD in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Córdoba, he completed his training at various institutions, including the Institute for Pathology at the Animal Medical School Hannover (Germany), the Institute for Animal Health (Pirbright, UK), and the College of Veterinary Medicine at Kansas State University (USA). Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Pathological Anatomy at the University of Córdoba, his scientific activity is carried out within the "Pathology and Immunology Group" (UCO-PIG; PAIDI AGR137), where he participates in 23 research projects and 25 technology transfer projects or agreements with companies. Indicators of the quality of his scientific output include his authorship of over 165 indexed publications, with an h-index of 32 and a normalized impact factor of 1.20. This work has also been recognized with various awards, such as the "R&D&I Projects in the Field of Agri-food Research 2010" award from the Caja Rural de Córdoba Foundation (2010), the second edition of the Animals Health Awards (2023), and the 13th Albéitar Award from the Andalusian Council of Official Veterinary Colleges (2023). He holds diplomas from the European College of Veterinary Pathology and the European College of Porcine Health Management, is a full member of the Royal Academies of Veterinary Sciences of Seville and of Veterinary Sciences of Eastern Andalusia, and participates as an expert in the "Andalusian Plan for Research and Innovation in Public Health 2024-2027" of the Andalusian Public Health System.

Orcid-0000-0002-4823-758X

African Swine Fever (ASF)

Antonio Rodríguez Bertos (UCM–VISAVET)

He graduated and obtained his PhD from the Veterinary School (Complutense University of Madrid). He is currently a professor in the Department of Animal Medicine and Surgery (VS-UCM) and Head of the Animal Pathology and Forensic Veterinary Service at the VISAVET-UCM center. He completed his training in pathology at the veterinary schools of Utrecht (Netherlands), Hannover (Germany), and the University of Davis (USA), as well as at the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System (San Bernardino, USA)

Orcid-0000-0001-9543-313X

Lumpy Skin Disease

Enric Vidal Barba (IRTA–CReSA)

Dr. Enric Vidal (Barcelona, 1977), DVM, PhD. He completed his veterinary studies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2000 and completed his doctoral thesis on the study of the pathogenesis of BSE at the same faculty in 2006. Since 2002, he has been head of the PRIOCAT laboratory (the reference laboratory for animal prion diseases in Catalonia) located at IRTA-CReSA (Animal Health Research Centre) a BSL3 facility where he also leads a research line on the neuropathology of TSEs. The line focuses on the study of the mechanisms of interspecies prion transmission barrier, the etiology of idiopathic prion diseases, the variability of prion disease phenotypes in nature and, more recently also gene-therapy based therapeutic approaches. Since 2007, he manages the Slaughterhouse Support Service (SESC) on behalf of the Health Department of the Generalitat de Catalunya (www.sesc.cat). This is a service to help official veterinary inspectors obtain a definitive diagnosis of slaughterhouse findings. He also participates in the anatomopathological studies of other CReSA research lines: tuberculosis, African swine fever, Classica swine fever, arbviruses, zoonotic coronaviruses, etc. and has an active participation in science divulgation activities (blogs, social networks, talks...). Since October 2025 he coordinates the scientific committee on Lumpy Skin Disease to support the government’s management of the current LSD outbreak in Catalonia.

Orcid-0000-0002-4965-3286