BVSc., MVSc., PhD., AVE (AVBC) Biju is a Lecturer in Dairy Medicine at the School of Agricultural, Environmental and Veterinary Sciences at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga. Biju received his veterinary training from India and MVSc in Immunology from Indian Veterinary Research Institute. After working for Ranbaxy Laboratories in India on New Drug Discovery Research, Biju moved to New Zealand to pursue his PhD in Molecular Medicine on a National Research Centre for Growth & Development funded project at the Liggins Institute at the University of Auckland. Biju then worked as a Research Fellow on a project focussed on novel therapeutic strategies to treat and prevent bovine mastitis at the Bayer Centre for Dairy Animal Health in University of Otago. Later, he joined as a Research Fellow in High Value Nutrition Funded project on Infant gut microbiome at the University of Auckland before moving to Flinders University to pursue a postdoctoral research position in a project focussed on cancer immunology. Biju has also worked in biotech/pharmaceutical industries in India, New Zealand and Australia on various research projects. More recently, Biju has worked as a Veterinarian in Melbourne and Auckland. Biju is excited to combine his clinical veterinary skills and biomedical/veterinary research experience in his current academic role at CSU. Biju has many years of experience teaching and demonstrating to undergraduate and postgraduate students in academia across various subjects. After completing his master's research, Biju briefly taught the veterinary clinical courses to final-year undergraduate veterinary students at the Kerala Agricultural University and demonstrated laboratory-based techniques to postgraduate students at the Indian Veterinary Research Institute. While working at the University of Otago and Flinders University, Biju mentored and co-supervised numerous postgraduate and PhD students. While at University of Auckland, Biju has served as an examiner for postgraduate thesis work. At CSU, Biju will be teaching various courses related to Dairy Medicine and Veterinary Science, with the goal of supervising and mentoring postgraduate and PhD students in their research. Biju has extensive experience leading research projects in both academia and industry, with a focus on the biomedical and veterinary fields. During his tenure at IVRI, he worked on Foot and Mouth Disease vaccine as well as on molecular diagnostics and DNA vaccines for Duck Viral Enteritis. He received a doctoral scholarship from NRCGD during his PhD training to study the transfer and effects of environmental endocrine disruptors on the human placenta. Later, he was awarded a postdoctoral research fellowship from Bayer Animal Health New Zealand to explore novel therapeutic strategies for treating and preventing bovine mastitis. He also received additional funding through a Lottery Health Research Grant to support his research at the University of Otago. His postdoctoral positions at the Liggins Institute and Flinders University enabled him to conduct internationally collaborative research in systems biology, nutrition, gut microbiome, and cancer immunology. Biju has led internationally collaborative projects at Ranbaxy, the Ministry for Primary Industries, and Trajan Scientific and Medical, with a focus on developing novel therapeutics and diagnostics. Throughout his industrial career, he has worked on projects related to human COPD, molecular barcoding.
Veterinary Science
Dr Biju Balakrishnan