WBVR director Annemarie Rebel about career opportunities

All over the world – and especially in European countries like the Netherlands – more attention is being paid to animal health and resilience, with as little use of medication as possible. In Dutch, this is called ‘Dierwaardige veehouderij’. This growing focus on responsible animal farming, together with recent disease outbreaks like bluetongue and bird flu, shows how important it is to better understand diseases, how they spread, and how they interact with animals and their environment.

“This kind of research involves many different types of experts,” says Annemarie Rebel, director of Wageningen Bioveterinary Research (WBVR), part of Wageningen University & Research. “We work with microbiologists, epidemiologists, veterinarians, data scientists, pathologists, as well as quality specialists, analysts, and technical support staff.” This multidisciplinary team helps us carry out our statutory tasks, supports our work as the National Reference Laboratory for many animal diseases, and helps us to find answers to research questions society puts forward.”

Global challenges

Societal awareness with regards to the relationship between animal and human health has increased, especially since the world pandemic caused by the Covid-19 virus. Also the importance of the multidisciplinary approach to connect human, animal and environmental health (OneHealth approach) gains importance. “More and more, people all over the world are conscious of the interaction between health threats and for example climate change and biodiversity shifts. We can’t afford looking into the problem from just one single angle,” emphasizes Rebel.

Focus areas

In its multi-year plan research institute WBVR chose focus areas which intertwine with the global challenges and offer a podium for different experts to work on animal health and disease/pathogens. “We defined Healthy Livestock, OneHealth, Hightech Animal Models – including 3R’s ‒ and Disease Outbreak Diagnostics as our fields of research. These form the base of our expertise.”

Invest in growth

Rebel continues: “For the years to come, we foresee a growing need for our multidisciplinary research, on a national level as well as in an international context.” With this growth perspective in mind, the institute starts an online career opportunity campaign. “At the moment we already have several interesting job openings at our institute for a wide range of experts. However, there is a growing demand for our expertise in the near future. For this reason we are allocating budget for investments to keep our facilities future-proof, and start a recruitment campaign to interest new colleagues in working with us. We welcome potential new colleagues ‒ from project leaders to supporting staff ‒ to get in touch with us to explore the options for a career at our institute”, says Rebel.