STSM Veterinary School Oniris (November 2019)

I grew up with Jules Verne’s books and my dreams and my imagination started with his wonderful stories. Today, I have had the opportunity to be in real contact with Jules Verne’s dreams, to visualise his imagination put into practice in the Machines of the Isle of Nantes, to work with very dedicated, visionary and enthusiastic French scientists. I started my Short- term scientific mission on November 25, 2019, when I was welcomed at the Oniris, Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire, Agroalimentaire et de l’Alimentation de Nantes-Atlantique at the Unit of Biology, Epidemiology and Risk Analysis in Animal Health (BIOEPAR) under the coordination of Pr. Aurélien Madouasse.

The mission WG3 | STSM3  entitled “Review and ranking of methods for the estimation of a probability of freedom from infection from data generated by disease control”, was a real challenge. Deeply inspired by the French collective work of discovering and conquering new horizons and crossing new frontiers of knowledge, I tried to grasp and keep pace. By discovering the prototypes of L’Arbre aux Hérons of the Machines, I started to examine and classify output-based surveillance methods: scenario tree model and hierarchical Bayesian model and their application in BVDV control programms at herd or country level, assessing their alternative design, from low to high complexity. Thanks to the coordination and advice of Professor Aurélien Madouasse and his team, I was able to gain an in-depth understanding of the working machinery of the Surveillance Tool for Outcome-based Comparison of FREEdom from infection,  and together we were able to establish its initial calibration and cut-off point. Thanks to the support of the Greek part of WG3, I was able to better understand the output-based surveillance methodology, and to review and rank the methods. Now, I am more ready to approach the surveillance based one the machine-learning algorithm, having see the animal- machinery designs and prototypes.

Breizh (Breton)’s experience was challenging and fruitfull, and I hope it will be only the beginning of a long-term cooperation. At the end of the three weeks of work, I feel like my wings have grown.

I am very grateful to the entire SOUND Control team for this unique opportunity to be involved in this ambitious project.

Thank you!

 

Adrian Ioan ARDELEAN

Institute for Diagnosis and Animal Health, Bucharest, Romania