Dr. Elsa Vasseur is the Associate Chairholder of the NSERC/Novalait/Dairy Farmers of Canada/Valacta Industrial Research Chair in Sustainable Life of Dairy Cattle. She received both her BSc and her first MSc in Rural Development from the Institut Supérieur d'Agriculture in Lille, France as well as a second MSc in Animal Behaviour from AgroParisTech in 2005. She then came to Canada where she obtained her PhD in Animal Science from Université Laval in 2009, looking at assessment tools for the on-farm welfare of young dairy animals. After an NSERC Post-doctoral Fellowship, where she worked with some of Canada’s leading researchers in dairy-cattle welfare at the University of British Columbia and Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, she took up a position at the University of Guelph’s Organic Dairy Research Centre on the Alfred Campus, before joining McGill in January as the Associate Chairholder.

Vasseur and her team will primarily focus their research work for the next 5 years on the NSERC-Novalait-DFC-Valacta IRC on Sustainable Life of Dairy Cattle. Three main research themes will be covered (Cf. Figure 1:F Overview of the research program the NSERC-Novalait-DFC-Valacta IRC on Sustainable Life of Dairy Cattle. Percentage reflect relative emphasis on time, budget and HQP allocation.