Houghton Trust Trustee

Professor Lonneke Vervelde

Professor Lonneke Vervelde is Chair of Veterinary Immunology and Infectious Diseases at The Roslin Institute and Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, University of Edinburgh.

Her laboratory is specialised in avian immunology and focuses on modulation of innate and adaptive immune responses to improve immune-mediated resistance. With the host responses at the centre of her research, the immune-modulatory factors that are studied range from pathogens and vaccines to nutrition and genetics.

More recently, she developed in vitro and ex vivo mucosal organ cultures, including 3D and 2D intestinal organoids and precision cut lung slices tools that can be used to investigate innate mucosal immunity, but also the mode of action of feed additives, host-pathogen interaction, and as diagnostic tools.

At the time of writing, she has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and since joining The Roslin Institute in 2013 she secured competitive grants totalling £4.6M as principal investigator. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2020 and has served the Houghton Trust as grant committee member (since 2014) and Trustee (since 2022).