Richard Whittington

BVSc (Hons 1, University Medal) MANZCVS PhD GAICD FASM

Senior Research Officer and Professor Emeritus in Veterinary Science.

Richard Whittington graduated from The University of Sydney in 1980. He worked in small animal and mixed veterinary practices in Australia and the United Kingdom, trained in veterinary pathology and joined the New South Wales Government veterinary diagnostic laboratory system. He commenced a research career in 1988 at NSW Agriculture & Fisheries veterinary labs where he studied economically significant diseases of livestock and fish, completing a PhD on the immunology of Dichelobacter nodosus infection in sheep. Richard was appointed to the Chair of Farm Animal Health in the Faculty of Veterinary Science at The University of Sydney in 2002. There he devised and led a major research program on infectious diseases, which included international projects. He developed and led ISO17025 accreditation of specialist infectious diseases laboratories at the Camden campus and was a World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH/OIE) technical expert, maintaining the international reference laboratory for ranaviruses. While supervising post graduate research scholars, he contributed to teaching in microbiology, pathology, veterinary public health and ruminant and aquatic animal health. He introduced a vertically-intergrated curriculum in aquatic animal health in the undergraduate veterinary and animal science degrees and was the inaugural chair of the Veterinary Public Health Management Program, a Masters by course-work degree. Professor Whittington initiated a succession plan for the discipline in 2017, and focussed his research effort towards improved control of neglected diseases in livestock and farmed aquatic animals through improved diagnostics, data analysis and vaccine development & registration. Professor Whittington is a NSW Veterinary Practitioners Board registered specialist in Veterinary Pathobiology and a Fellow of the Australian Society for Microbiology. Professor Whittington is an active researcher, advisor and mentor of young academics and supervises research higher degree students. He is a member of Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute (Sydney ID) https://www.sydney.edu.au/infectious-diseases, Sydney Institute of Agriculture https://www.sydney.edu.au/agriculture/ and Sydney South-East Asia Centre https://sydney.edu.au/sydney-southeast-asia-centre/. Professor Whittington curates community websites to provide factual technical information to farmers and veterinarians on ovine footrot http://footrotsydney.org/ and oyster health http://oysterhealthsydney.org/. He is an active member of the International Association for Paratuberculosis.