Veterinary pathologist, Mauricio Seguel, joined the Ontario Veterinary College’s (OVC) Department of Pathobiology this summer as an assistant professor.
Mauricio is interested in all aspects of wildlife diseases, with special emphasis on the effect of environmental change on the immune system of wild animals and infectious diseases ecology.
His main research interest is to understand the drivers and consequences of immune competence in wild animals, including a deeper understanding of the processes of immune variability, immunosenescence, or the gradual deterioration of the immune system, and immune ontogeny, or development of early life immunity, in natural populations. He is also interested in developing new diagnostic applications for non-domestic species.
He completed his veterinary degree at Universidad Austral de Chile in 2010, followed by a residency in anatomic veterinary pathology at the University of Georgia in the U.S. He became a diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists in 2015.
In 2018, he also completed a PhD at the University of Georgia, focusing his thesis on the environmental and immune drivers of hookworm disease in South American fur seal in Patagonia.
Before joining OVC, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia, working on a project on the immune drivers of tuberculosis in African buffalo.