Carles Vilalta

Carles graduated in Veterinary Medicine/Science from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2000. Until 2007 he worked for different pig production companies managing health and production on sow farms. As of 2007, Carles started working for the Meat Industries’ Federation of Catalonia in managing activities regarding the veterinary inspection assistants at the Catalonian abattoirs and the training in food hygiene in the meat industries.

From 2008 to 2014, Carles pursued a Ph.D. in applied clinical pharmacology under the guidance of Lorenzo Fraile. His research focused on the administration of different doses of marbofloxacin in pigs and its effect on two of the most important respiratory pathogens: Haemophilus parasuis and Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae, as well as the implication of these doses with the emergence of resistances. While pursuing his Ph.D., Carles simultaneously worked as an Official Sanitary Inspector at the slaughterhouse and had occasional collaborations with different veterinarians in the field. He continued these roles until 2016 when he joined the University of Minnesota (UMN) as a post-doc in Robert Morrison's team in the Department of Population Medicine at the same university's veterinary faculty. His duties at UMN were framed within the UMN's swine disease monitoring project (Dr. Morrison Swine Health Monitoring Program [MSHMP]), where various companies, accounting for approximately 50% of the US pig census, share voluntary information on various non-mandatory reporting diseases, notably PRRS and PED. His role in the project was to lead the epidemiology of PRRS, data visualization, and to develop new, more efficient monitoring strategies. Carles worked at UMN until 2020 when he returned to Spain.

From 2020 onwards, Carles worked as a consultant in animal health and in data analysis for companies related to the pig industry.

Currently, he is working as a Ramon y Cajal researcher at IRTA-CReSA, where he joined in 2022. His duties encompass research related to the epidemiology of PRRS in Catalonia and the epidemiology of pig diseases, as well as the use of data to improve the health of the pig industry

Updated CV 04-Oct-2023