prof.dr. JMJ (Annemarie) Rebel

Annemarie Rebel is director of Wageningen Bioveterinary Research and Professor Healthy and Resilient Livestock at Wageningen University & Research.

Wageningen Bioveterinary Research (WBVR) is part of Wageningen University & Research (WUR). Its scientists collaborates with public and private partners to perform top level veterinary and biomedical research for animal and public health (One Health). The institute in Lelystad has combined state-of-the-art animal and laboratory services (HCU with BSL3 and BSL4).

With the special chair as professor at the Adaptation Physiology group, she will study resilience of animals, the possibility to optimize the intrinsic capacities will lead to animals that are able to cope with challenges. Moreover this may lead to less disease outbreaks and supports the one health approach by increase for the one health part, reduction of medicine use, and less disease susceptibility

Annemarie gained her doctorate from Erasmus University Rotterdam for the human medicine subject ‘Recurrence rate of bladder cancer’. She subsequently did research at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on metastasis of prostate cancer. Following a switch to research in livestock she started at Infection Biology within the Central Veterinary Institute.

I focus my research on a better understanding of resilience against disease and transitions which will result in tools to increase health and resilience in animals. During my entire career I researched the differences in host response and the interaction to different challenges. I am intrigued to elucidate the mechanisms explaining the differences in responses between individuals, to similar (given) challenges. Why and how differ these responses, and can we steer those into directions of desired responses. I like to collaborate with other researchers and to bridge expertise to find answers to complex questions, like resilience.

With this special chair I will study resilience of animals, the possibility to optimize the intrinsic capacities will lead to animals that are able to cope with challenges. Moreover this may lead to less disease outbreaks and supports the one health approach by increase for the one health part, reduction of medicine use, and less disease susceptibility

I gained my doctorate from Erasmus University Rotterdam for the human medicine subject ‘Recurrence rate of bladder cancer’. I subsequently did research at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on metastasis of prostate cancer. Following a switch to research in livestock I started at  Infection Biology within the Central Veterinary Institute.  As head of the department of animal health and welfare (WLR)  I was responsible for research into the interaction between animals and the environment, such as nutrition, pathogens, microbiome,  and stress. With the aim to improve animal health, intestinal health and welfare. At present, I am chairperson of the Netherlands Centre or One Health (NCOH), a collaboration in which several scientific partners in human and animal health participate to improve research in the area of One Health, both in a national and international context.