Graduate profiles

Marisol tells us how the Masters has shaped her career and given her international opportunities.

Walter explains how our programme has helped as a veterinarian in south east Uganda and as a research scientist in Australia.

How the International Animal Health programme helped Emmanuel Isingoma develop as a government veterinarian in Uganda.

Daniel Mwangi Njuguna tells us how the International Animal Health programme helped him develop his knowledge of zoonotic diseases in the dairy sector in Kenya.

I have always known that I wanted to work at the international level on collaborative projects with other scientists, and thus the “One Health” approach was very attractive, not only for the level of science it fosters, but also for its direct applicability and the solutions that it may provide to people and animals worldwide.

I qualified as a veterinarian 2006 in South Africa and after 5 years in private practice I decided to study further in the 'One Health' field. I came across the International Animal Health programme at the University of Edinburgh and was very keen to do a degree in this field, especially through this prestigious university. I started the programme in 2011 and finished in 2014.

When I qualified as a veterinarian in 2007, I was not drawn to traditional veterinary careers but was unsure of what career path I wanted to follow. A chance encounter with a group of field researchers studying schistosomiasis in chimpanzees and humans in Uganda provided the ‘light bulb’ moment for me, and I decided that “One Health” was the focus I had been looking for.

On completing my doctor of veterinary medicine programme from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria in 1997, I returned home to Cameroon. I started giving part-time lectures at the department of Animal Sciences, University of Dschang with the hope to start a postgraduate programme. Things did not turn out as planned and before the end of my contract with the university I was taken up by the Cameroon government to work in the ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal industries.

When I joined the then Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and currently the College of Veterinary Medicine Animal Resources and Biotechnology at Makerere University, I found that over six very senior Faculty members had at some point been trained and graduated from the University of Edinburgh. As such, this group of Senior Faculty members, just like anyone else, regarded The University of Edinburgh very highly.

For the first half of my career I focused solely on the clinical aspect of being an equine practitioner in a large practice, then went on to specialise in donkeys.