Előadók

Last modified: 11. August 2026

Alex Wealleans is a commercial poultry nutritionist with Premier Nutrition. After a gaining a BSc in Agriculture and a PhD in Animal Nutrition from the University of Reading, she spent more than a decade in global technical and research roles in the feed additive industry. Initially, she used data to prove the efficacy of products under controlled, experimental settings before moving on to modelling, meta-analysis and large, real-world datasets. Today, she uses data to drive customers towards precision nutrition and data-driven decision-making.

 

 
 

Dr. María Botía González is a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Clinical Analysis (Interlab-UMU), University of Murcia, Spain. She holds a PhD in Veterinary Medicine, specializing in the physiological validation of salivary biomarkers to evaluate stress, welfare, and inflammation in pigs. Her research integrates advanced analytical technologies, such as immunoassays, colorimetric and chemiluminescent automated analyzers, and quantitative proteomics, to advance non-invasive swine monitoring. Her scientific contributions are centred on the establishment of reliable analytical panels for the assessment of endocrine stress, immune responses and positive emotional states.”

 

 
 

Professor and Head of Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, Aarhus University, Denmark
Charlotte Lauridsen has (since 2018) been professor in nutritional immunology, and her research has during the last 25 years focused on nutrient absorption and the impact of food and feed on gut health and disease mechanisms primarily in monogastrics. She was in 2020-21 appointed as professor in experimental nutrition at the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aalborg University, Denmark, where she played a key role in the establishment and management of the Danish Nutrition Science Center, and is now continuing this collaboration as adjunct professor at the Department. In 2021 she became Head of Department at the Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences. This department is hosting two new educations (Veterinary Science and Animal Science), which started up with students at the campus AU Viborg at Aarhus University in 2024. Animal Science has always been a key research area for Charlotte Lauridsen, and her research has mostly been devoted to pigs. She is coordinator of the PIG-PARADIGM (https://projects.au.dk/pig-paradigm), which is funded under the Antimicrobial Resistance Initiative with 150 mill DKK by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. In November microbiome, gut-brain axis.2025, she became president of Animal Task Force (https://animaltaskforce.eu/).

 

 
 

Ariel Shabtay is a leading expert in sustainable livestock production, specializing in the integration of ruminant stress physiology, genetics, and targeted nutrition. Over the past two decades, his research has focused on developing advanced biomarker and genomics-based tools to enhance livestock resilience, predict disease susceptibility, and improve product quality.

A significant portion of Dr. Shabtay’s work involves pioneering non-invasive predictive techniques for animal health. He developed a plasma biomarker tool capable of forecasting Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD) with over 90% accuracy within the first week of a calf's life. Furthermore, his research into feed efficiency identified the FABP4 gene as a primary candidate influencing energy expenditure in both growing calves and lactating cows.

Dr. Shabtay is also recognized for his innovative contributions to circular agriculture and sustainable nutrition. He successfully demonstrated the conversion of olive mill waste into nutritious cattle feed using Pleurotus mushrooms and developed a patented concentrated pomegranate peel extract that improves milk yield and mitigates stress in ruminants.  Additionally, he introduced drought-tolerant Moringa oleifera into arid agro-systems, proving its ability to enhance feed efficiency and the nutritional profile of dairy and meat products.

His research extends to animal welfare and genetic conservation, where he established a dedicated herd of indigenous Baladi cattle to study their unique genomic adaptation to harsh Mediterranean environments. He has also pioneered the use of proximity sensors to map social networks in group-housed cattle, creating a "sociability index" to preemptively manage stress and disease.

In 2018, Dr. Shabtay co-founded the Model Farm for Sustainable Agriculture at Newe Ya’ar, where he currently leads the Ruminant Farming Platform

 

 
 

Krisztina J. Kovács is a biologist, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neuroendocrinology, Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Research Network, HUN-REN, Budapest, Hungary.

Her major focus is the functional neuroanatomy of the hypothalamus with special focus on the integration of neuroendocrine, metabolic and behavioral responses to various stressors. Recently her group is interested in the connection between the gut microbiome and remote organs such as reproductive organs and brain. The Laboratory holds a collection of specific Lactobacillus isolates which are tested for unique features along the gut-brain and gut-testis axis. Although most of the research is done on laboratory rodents, her group is open to innovation in farm animal- and human applications.