DrJosé A. Quinteros

DVM, MVSc, PhD

Dr Jose Quinteros is a poultry veterinarian. He got his DVM degree from the University of Chile in 2004. Almost immediately after, in January 2005, Dr Quinteros was appointed as a field veterinarian at Sopraval S.A., a company part of Agrosuper Holding, the biggest food-producing company in his home country, Chile (www.agrosuper.cl). Over almost seven years, he gained experience in the diagnosis and treatment of the most prevalent diseases in the turkey production industry at that time, including Fowl Cholera (caused by Pasteurella multocida), avian influenza H1N1, avian pathogenic Escherichia coli (APEC), and Ornithobacterium rhinotracheale (ORT), among others. He was also part of the company's Quality Assurance team, supervising national and international regulatory programs.

In 2012, Dr Quinteros moved to Australia to commence a Master of Veterinary Science program (by research) at the University of Melbourne, supervised by Professor Glenn Browning, Dr Philip Markham and Dr Sang-Won Lee. He was the first person to decipher the complete genome sequence of an Australian strain of infectious bronchitis virus (IBV), an avian coronavirus of the genus Gammacoronavirus.

After completing his master's degree in 2014, he worked in Baiada Poultry (Steggles) within their turkey division as a Service Manager based in Beresfield, NSW, under the supervision of Garry Currie. He oversaw the turkey-producing farms located all over the Hunter Valley, looking after their health status and vaccination programs, as well as their compliance with the company's husbandry guidelines.

In 2015, Dr Quinteros returned to the University of Melbourne, this time as a PhD candidate at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Animal Health, supervised by Professor Browning and Lee, but also by Professor Amir Noormohammadi and Dr Andres Diaz-Mendez. He studied the pathogenicity and tissue tropism of different strains of IBV and completed the whole-genome sequence of 19 Australian strains.

In 2019, he joined Scolexia Pty. Ltd., an avian health consultancy company founded by Dr Peter Scott, as a researcher for its R&D team led by Dr Timothy Wilson. During this role, he conducted various research projects, including testing the efficacy of a Campylobacter hepaticus (CH) autogenous vaccine. CH has been claimed as the causative agent of Spotty Liver Disease, an emerging disease affecting cage-free laying hens in Australia and worldwide. He also worked on a project testing the efficacy of adding isoquinoline alkaloids into the diet of laying hens to prevent the damage produced by Spotty Liver Disease. Another project he was involved with was testing the protection conferred by a vaccine program, including a commercial Salmonella Typhimurium live vaccine and a Salmonella Enteritidis autogenous vaccine, proving that a live-vaccine booster is essential to achieve proper protection against an SE challenge. Additionally, he was part of other projects, testing different types of pigments in colouring the egg yolks and testing the seroconversion conferred by the Erysipelas vaccine in laying hens. He was the first researcher to describe a decrease in egg weight produced by the infection with CH.

At the end of 2021, Dr Quinteros returned to his home country to join the University Vina del Mar as Head of the Veterinary School, leading a team of 15 academics and planning a curriculum change to be applicable in 2015. He also designed a new progress evaluation for students finishing the second year of DVM to evaluate the acquisition of the learning outcomes included in the Career Plan. He also improved the Net Promoter Score for the DVM degree from -19% in 2021 to +29% in 2022, thanks to close collaboration with students and student associations.

Finally, Dr Quinteros was contacted by the University of Sydney and decided to return to Australia, his second home, to join the Sydney School of Veterinary Science as a Lecturer in Avian Health. Dr Quinteros is currently a member of the Poultry Research Foundation, the Australasian Veterinary Poultry Association (AVPA), the Australian Veterinary Association, the Sydney South-East Asia Centre and the Sydney Infectious Disease Institute (Sydney ID).