Xavier Fernandez Aguilar

Background

​I completed my Veterinary Degree at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in 2009, for which I performed an undergraduate research stay of seven months at the National Veterinary Institute of Sweden (SVA) where I assisted on an Arctic fox conservation project. I subsequently performed different volunteer stays in wildlife rehabilitations centers in Spain and then in 2010 I did a MSc in Wildlife Management and Health at the Universidad de Murcia. I worked as research technician between 2011 and 2012 for the University of Lisbon, in a road ecology project developed at the Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC). In 2017, I defended my PhD on the epidemiology of Infectious Keratoconjunctivitis at the wildlife-livestock interface in high mountain ecosystems from northern Spain, at the UAB. During my time at UAB, I also gained experience on virology, microbiology, and molecular epidemiology on infectious diseases at the University of Bern and at CReSA-IRTA (Animal Health Research Center). I worked as a postdoctoral research assistant at the Royal Veterinary College (University of London) in 2018, with international projects on emerging infectious diseases such as Lassa Fever and Peste des Petits Ruminants. From 2018 to 2022, I worked as a postdoc at Kutz’s lab at the University of Calgary on caribou health and community-based wildlife health surveillance in the Arctic. Throughout my professional journey, I've engaged with a diverse range of pathogens and wildlife health issues, often in complex systems involving livestock and human interactions.