MSD Animal Health Research Bursary for Veterinary Students

Research is essential for the welfare of animals and the future of the veterinary profession. The 2023 MSD Animal Health Research Bursary is now welcoming applications from veterinary students in support of their research projects which are completed within 24 months.

The MSD Animal Health Research Bursary for Veterinary Students grants the opportunity to 5 veterinary students within the UK to win an award of £1,000 for their research project.  All bursary recipients will be invited to present their research conclusions at the annual MSD Animal Health Research Bursary Awards Day.  The two best research projects presented on the day will also be awarded a further £1,000 top prize and a £500 runner-up prize respectively. The two winners will also be encouraged to present their findings at a relevant UK veterinary conference. This will be facilitated by MSD Animal Health with funding of hotel accommodation, delegate registration and a further award of £500.

Alysia Empert-Gallegos was awarded the runner-up prize at the Research Bursary Awards Day in 2020 for her project on dog owner perspectives on the risks, benefits, and nutritional value of raw diets compared to commercial cooked diets. Her work has recently been published and can be found here.

The judging criteria for the research project applications are:
•    Quality and clarity of the research project application
•    The realistic aspirations of the proposed research project
•    The project’s potential value in terms of clinical relevance, and its societal/welfare impact
•    The originality of the research project

The successful applications for 2021 were:

•  Euan Woodside of the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies for his research into equivalence trial testing for progesterone levels in bovine milk samples.
•  Bonnie Yang of the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies for her project on the programmed in vitro production of pig macrophages: a new platform for the development of strategies to combat commercially important livestock pathogens.
• Ruowen Liu of the  Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies for project on the exploration of canine pelvis morphology and identification of causal genomic regions from genome-wide association studies.
• Maxim Bembinov of the Royal Veterinary College for a project on improving objectivity of Doppler ultrasound in tendinopathy and desmopathy.
• William Dabri of the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies for research into whether strains of avian influenza virus will be detected in high-density wild waterfowl regions around Scotland using RT-qPCR of sediment samples.