• The over-all goal of my research program is to ensure a safe and economical food supply with a reduced risk of transmission of zoonotic diseases to farm families and the general public.

• I have two main research interests; the first is to prevent and control infectious diseases on dairy farms, primarily mastitis and Johne’s disease, including both animal and public health perspectives. New prevention and control programs in Canada, The Netherlands and other countries, have been introduced or modified based on results of my research.

• My second main research interest involves interactions among hosts, microbes and the environment in antimicrobial resistance.

• Dr. Herman Barkema completed his DVM degree at Utrecht Univ., The Netherlands, in 1988. He spent 2½ years as manager of a large dairy and beef herd in Costa Rica, then taught bovine herd health at Utrecht Univ. and worked as an epidemiologist for the Dutch Animal Health Service while completing his PhD. In 2001, Dr. Barkema moved to the Univ. of PEI.

• He subsequently moved to the Univ. of Calgary, where he founded UCVM’s Dept. of Production Animal Health. He currently is Professor in Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases at UCVM and NSERC Industrial Research in Infectious Diseases of Dairy Cattle, with a joint appointment in the Dept. of Community Health Sciences of the Cumming School of Medicine. He is also a Guest Professor at Ghent Univ. (Belgium) and Foreign Expert at the China Agricultural Univ. in Beijing.

• Dr. Barkema’s research program focuses on prevention and control of diseases in cattle herds, including antimicrobial resistance. He has published > 300 scientific manuscripts and has lectured all over the world. He leads the UCalgary Biostatistics Centre, the Environment research theme in the Canadian Bovine Mastitis Research Network, the Alberta Johne’s Disease Initiative, the Antimicrobial Resistance – One Health Consortium, and UCalgary’s One Health Emerging Cross-cutting Research Theme.

Research areas

• Clinical Science
• Epidemiology
• Immunology and Infectious Disease
• Production Animal Health