Dr. Karen Overall
Dr.
Overall received her BA, MA, and VMD degrees from the University of
Pennsylvania, and her PhD from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She
completed her residency in behavioral medicine at the University of
Pennsylvania, is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Behavior
(ACVB) and is certified by the Animal Behavior Society (ABS) as an Applied
Animal Behaviorist.
Dr. Overall has given
hundreds of national and international presentations and short courses and is
the author of over 100 scholarly publications on behavioral medicine and lizard
behavioral ecology and dozens of textbook chapters. Her first textbook, Clinical
Behavioral Medicine for Small Animals, was published in 1997. Her
new book, Manual of Small Animal Clinical Behavioral Medicine,
will be published by Elsevier in 2009, accompanied by an instructional video, Humane
behavioral care for dogs: techniques for the treatment and prevention of
canine behavior problems.. Another text, Behavioral
Medicine for Old Dogs, will follow later, as will a revision of her
first text. She is also a columnist for DVM Newsmagazine. Dr.
Overall is the editor-in-chief for the Elsevier journal, Journal of
Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research.
Dr. Overall ran the
behavior clinic at Penn Vet for more than a dozen years and is now on the
faculty of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior in the Psychiatry
Department at Penn Med as a Research Associate. Dr. Overall’s research
focuses on neurobehavioral genetics of dogs and the development of normal and
abnormal behaviors, and on the development of behaviors beneficial to working
dogs and their genetics.
Dr. Overall frequently
consults with service and assistance dog organizations and military and police
organizations that use dogs in any capacity. She also consults frequently
with law makers regarding legislation affecting dogs, and is frequently called
as an expert in abuse, neglect, and aggression cases involving dogs. Additionally,
Dr. Overall is often consulted by humane shelters about evaluation of dogs and
improving canine care. She speaks regularly at the Pennsylvania Bar
Association Institute on canine issues. Dr. Overall is past
Co-Chair of the US government supported SWGDOG (the Scientific Working Group on
Dogs and Orthogonal detector Guidelines), and serves on the board of Directors
of both charitable (PALS for Life) and working dog (International Working Dog
and Breeding Association [IWDBA]) organizations. In 2008 Dr. Overall was
appointed by PA Governor Rendell to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Canine
Health Board. She was awarded the 1993 Randy Award for Excellence and
Creativity in Research. In 2005, Dr. Overall was voted the Small Animal
Speaker of the year at the North American Veterinary Conference.
When she is not
traveling, speaking, writing, seeing patients, or conducting research, she
tries to play with her 4 Australian shepherds and husband - and collaborator -
Dr. Art Dunham, who shares her passion for the wonder and logic of science,
fine art, language, culture, wild places, and doing the right thing.
Dr. Art Dunham received his PhD at the university of Michigan in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. His research interests have focused on all things mathenmatical pertaining to animals and the populations in which they live. As an ecologist and applied inferential statistician he has worked on the effects of conspecifics and microclimates on lizards, global warming and implications for West Nile virus, dinosaur physiology and allometry, and performance assessment and its genetic associations in working dogs. He is increasingly being asked by working dog programs to help them improve their test reliability.
Dr. Dunham is currently professor of Biology and Associate Chair of the Biology Department of the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Dr. Soraya Juarbe-Diaz
Dr. Juarbe-DÃaz has the longest established behavior referral
practice in the state of Florida. Known as Dr. JD to owners throughout the
state, she received a B.S. in biology in 1983 and her D.V.M. degree in 1987
both from Cornell University. She was in mixed practice for about 1 1/2 years
and in small animal practice for 5 1/2 before returning to her alma mater for
specialty training in veterinary behavior medicine. She finished her residency
in 1996 and received her board certification in 1997. Certification by the
Animal Behavior Society as a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist was conferred
in 1999.
In the fall of that year she relocated to the Sunshine State where
she began the longest-established a referral veterinary behavior practice,
seeing cases throughout several Florida locations. She has been an adjunct
professor at the University of Florida's College of Veterinary Medicine and an
Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee's College of Veterinary
Medicine, running the behavior clinic at each university and teaching
veterinary behavior medicine to students and all interested hospital staff
while also seeing patients for treatment of behavior problems. She was a
monthly guest host for a nationally syndicated live radio show for 6 years
where she answered radio listeners' questions on the air.
Dr.
Juarbe-DÃaz has served in several committees of the American College of Veterinary
Behaviorists and as the Assistant Editorial of the Journal of Veterinary
Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research and continues to be a reviewer for
several veterinary professional journals. She is a speaker at local, national
and international veterinary meetings and behavior conferences and also the
author of a variety of papers and articles on behavior written for professional
and lay publications. Her professional interests include behavioral disorders
in domestic species and animal cognition in particular.
Because of her experience both in academia and in general
practice, she brings to her professional endeavors the best of both worlds: a
drive for excellence and for staying abreast of advances in veterinary behavior
medicine along with the common sense needed to make things work in the real
world.
Even
with such a busy professional life she makes the time to enjoy the finer things
in life such as chocolate, coffee, the company of friends and horseback
riding. Her house is a home thanks to her rescue dogs, cat and
horse.
Ms. Donna Dyer
Donna Dyer is a
graduate of Bel-Rea Institute of Animal Technology in Denver, Colorado and is
licensed to practice as a veterinary technician in the Commonwealth of
Virginia.
Donna’s
interest in animal behavior developed while studying indigenous wildlife in
East Africa as part of her zoology curriculum at The Ohio State University,
leading to several years as a volunteer keeper and docent at the Denver
Zoo. For the last 13 years, she has focused her efforts on companion
animal behavior. Donna owned and operated a home-based business in Denver, CO,
where she taught behavior management and modification techniques to dog owners
and developed and presented educational programs for veterinary
professionals.
Donna has been
employed as a research assistant at the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior,
Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania since
2004. She serves as the editorial assistant for the Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and
Research and works as a technical writer and consultant
to a pet product manufacturer.
In 2002, Donna
became a member of the Veterinary Medical Assistance Team 2 (VMAT2).
VMAT2, now called National Veterinary Response Team 2, is a part of the Federal
Emergency Response Plan and the National Disaster Medical System.
Donna is a
co-founder and past president of the Society of Veterinary Behavior
Technicians.
Camilla Mauzy, PhD
Dr. Mauzy has
been examining the uses of cutting-edge genetic approaches to the needs of the
DoD, and is part of a new research focus at
the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) into Human Performance Optimization (HPO).
This laboratory is currently examining several performance and cognition issues
using state-of-the-art genetic and bioinformatic tools as aids to optimize
training issues. One of the Air Force missions is the breeding and training of
the Military Working Dog, and this project demonstrates a commitment and
understanding that optimized training issues need to be addressed in the MWD as
well as the soldier. Prior to joining AFRL/RHPB, Dr Mauzy was at VetGen LLC,
Ann Arbor, MI, for over 71/2 years. During this period, she performed research
on identification of gene mutations responsible for two inherited canine
diseases: Juvenile Early Onset Cataract and Progressive Rod-cone Degeneration
(PRCD). She also worked in screening select samples for mutations involved in
the canine bleeding disorder von Willebrand's Disease (vWD). A committed dog
lover, Dr. Mauzy hopes to bring the latest scientific technologies to advance
Military Working Dog breeding and training issues.
Victor Chan, DPhil
Dr. Victor Chan
received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Oxford,
England. Dr. Chan has been in charge of the Genomics Core Facility at the
Applied Biotechnology Branch, Air Force Research Laboratory since 2001. During
this period, Dr. Chan has been actively engaging in various research projects
that use advanced genomics and proteomic profiling techniques. He also has been
in charge of the development of advanced bioinformatics for data mining
(pattern recognition, feature selection and classification), as well as for
reverse engineering and modeling of biological networks.
Francis
Galibert, PhD
Dr.
Francis Galibert, 75, is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Rennes
1 (France). For many years he has been interested in genome structure
comparison and has lead or participated in several sequencing projects; from
the complete sequence of the Hepatitis B virus in the early days of the
sequencing era to, more recently, that of the dog genome.
A
molecular biologist by training, he became interested in dog genetics in the
early 90s. At that time he realized the wealth of information held by the
varied breeds, created to satisfy different purposes, which could be useful in
deciphering the complexity of the haplotype / genotype relationship. More
recently he has turned his interest toward analyzing the very high olfactory
capabilities that all dogs have with the hope of understanding why some breeds
are more talented than others at particular tasks.
