Meet our Director

As a translational orthopedic researcher who practices small animal orthopedic surgery, my main research interest has been in genetics and complex trait mapping. My research has relied at a fundamental level on leveraging natural inherited disease in our veterinary clinical population to discover the genetic factors predisposing to complex trait inheritance. The Cornell Veterinary Biobank is the first biobank to achieve accreditation by the International Standards Organization (ISO 203807). I am convinced that properly processed and archived biological samples, with a clear chain of attribution, are critical to valid preclinical and basic research. Using these samples, I am interested in reducing the severity of complex orthopedic traits in dogs especially hip dysplasia, elbow dysplasia, rupture of the cranial cruciate ligament (ACL in humans), and Legg Calve Perthes disease using genetic and genomic tools. The goal is to develop a tool kit of genetic strategies to identify breeding dogs with good orthopedic genetic quality to predict and prevent and introduce novel therapies for orthopedic disease. As a surgeon, I am concerned about surgically-related orthopedic infection in dogs and how to better surveil these infections in our teaching hospital to reduce and prevent them using epidemiological, genomic and metabolomic tools.