Karen Laurenson

Dr. Karen Laurenson qualified as a vet from Cambridge University in 1987 and then spent 3 years in Tanzania studying cheetah behaviour and ecology for a Ph.D. Thereafter, she combined her interests in disease and ecology by carrying-out postdoctoral research on wildlife disease epidemiology, particularly at the wildlife-domestic animal interface, with a long term study of louping-ill dynamics in wild and domestic species (red grouse) in the UK and shorter projects in Namibia and South America. Since 1996, she has been involved in research and conservation programmes to reduce the threat of rabies and other dog diseases to the Ethiopian wolves. Dr. Laurenson was based at the University of Edinburgh Veterinary School as a research fellow and then as a lecturer since 1997. Currently, she is also working part-time for Frankfurt Zoological Society as a Programme Officer for their Africa program, with particular responsibility for projects involving veterinary issues in Ethiopia and Congo.