Gavojdian Joins WSU Through February

Washington State University’s Department of Animal Sciences announced earlier this month the addition of Visiting Fulbright Scholar Dr. Dinu Gavojdian.  Gavojdian comes to WSU from the Research and Development Institute for Bovine, Romania.  He joins Dr. Adams Progar’s research group to work on evaluating health and welfare in dairy cattle, and he will conduct research at WSU through February.  Gavojdian has researched dairy cattle behavior since 2005, and started leading projects of his own in 2015.

Most of his current work centers on improving ruminant animals’ production efficiency and welfare, under various production systems.  At the Home Institute Gavojdian lead a small research group, focused on: 

• determining whether vocal parameters of cattle and water-buffalo can be deciphered in order to be used as non-invasive animal-based indicators for welfare assessment
• studying the effects that behavioural reactivity of dairy cattle and water-buffaloes has on production and reproduction efficiency, as well as on animal welfare
• exploring pathways for the exploitation of sensor data and biomarkers, in order to monitor health and stress, in order to set-up early warning alarm thresholds of poor welfare and disease in farmed ruminants

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