The Princess Royal visits Moredun

Published: 30 November 2016

Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal visited Moredun Foundation today to find out how creative design has been applied to benefit the health and welfare of livestock in a special event to help celebrate Scotland’s year of Innovation, Architecture and Design.

The event held at Pentlands Science Park, the headquarters of the world renowned Moredun Foundation and Moredun Research Institute, highlighted the contribution of excellent design and innovative collaboration to produce new products, technologies and creative communication tools to help improve the health and welfare of livestock both in Scotland and across the world.

The Princess Royal was joined by over 100 representatives from the livestock and agricultural industries, government and research communities to listen to some case studies presented by early career scientists from Moredun.

Dr Valentina Busin presented her work, in collaboration with Heriot Watt University, looking at how smart engineering has enabled the design of a rapid penside diagnostic test for sheep scab; Dr Dan Price described how application of new protein expression technologies have revolutionised the development of new vaccines against nematode worms and Dr Thomas Tzelos presented a short animated film on parasite control and prevention of drug resistance to show how innovative design can help to communicate complex scientific information in an easy to understand and informative way.

“Moredun is delighted to welcome Her Royal Highness, The Princess Royal to our event where we are showcasing the very exciting new research, conducted by our early career scientists, showing the benefits of applying innovative design to improve the health and welfare of livestock”.

Mr Ian Duncan Millar, Chairman of the Moredun Foundation

During her visit, HRH The Princess Royal met guests including a group of post-graduate students and early career scientists, representatives from the farming industry, designers, the research organisations and the Equine Grass Sickness charity.

Before leaving, HRH The Princess Royal had a private tour of the laboratories and met scientists involved in livestock disease surveillance and diagnostics, the E.coli research group and the Johne’s disease research collaboration.

Source: Moredun Foundation