Summary of the short-term academic visit to the Royal Veterinary College

As part of the LinkTADs project, the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) and China Animal Health and Epidemiology Center (CAHEC) organized a short-term academic visit to the RVC for an expert from CAHEC.

It was my first time in the UK and I enjoyed those four weeks representing CAHEC and exchanging knowledge with researchers from RVC.

Firstly I would like to highlight the most impressive aspects of the academic surrounding in RVC:

• Beautiful campus environment encourages talent training;
• Solid learning system provides necessary means to reveal researcher’s potential;
• Improved team building due to multidisciplinary collaboration;
• Veterinary epidemiological studies are in line with highest professional standards;
• Personal communication serves as an effective way to seek cooperation opportunities and build new links between institutions.

In addition, I consider the following outcomes to be the most important achievements of my visit:

• Enhanced knowledge about epidemiology systems, main surveillance and investigation tasks on the national level in the United Kingdom;
• Familiarity with advanced research areas, topics, and current programs in RVC;
• Practical review of animal disease surveillance technical methodology used in field practices.

I believe it is necessary to include staff exchanges in the projects run by RVC in order to establish further strong collaboration ties; more students from China should also be engaged in academic courses, offered by RVC, in particular in the fields of surveillance and risk analysis. Moreover, Chinese experts will benefit from learning about animal health information systems operation and creation of relevant databases.