Marta Barral Lahidalga

TRAYECTORIA

Marta Barral holds a degree in Veterinary form the University of Zaragoza, where she also took her Doctorate degree with the thesis “Study of Borrelia burgdorferi, Ehrlichia phagocytophila group and sheep encephalitis virus infection in the Basque Country Ixodidae ticks”. She hold the position of researcher in the NEIKER’s Animal Health Department and works in the fields of tick-borne diseases and wildlife disease surveillance, principally focused on the study of zoonosis. During the last few years, Marta has been studying the avian influenza epidemiology within the wildlife-domestic interface, as well as working on developing new protocols for influenza virus molecular subtyping and looking for better ways to isolate said virus. Along her main field of research, she is also studying diseases shared between wildlife, livestock and humans. One of these diseases being tuberculosis, she has been working towards finding out more about its prevalence and distribution on wildlife through determining the risk of transmission by livestock-wildlife interactions around farms and the use of vaccination trials on badgers for disease control.