Susan Kutz

Biography

Dr. Susan Kutz is a veterinary parasitologist.  She completed her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Saskatchewan in 1992. After working as a veterinarian in the Canadian Arctic for a few years she returned to do a PhD in wildlife parasitology at the University of Saskatchewan. Following that she was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, where she studied host-parasite associations in Beringia. She was a founding member of the new Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Calgary and is a Professor in the Department of Ecosystem and Public Health. She also is the Director of the Alberta Node of the Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre and a member of the Terrestrial Mammals Committee on COSEWIC (Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada).  Dr. Kutz’s research interests include understanding the impacts of climate and landscape change on host-parasite interactions in the Arctic. She has research programs investigating parasite biodiversity, invasion processes, and the impacts of parasites on host populations, food safety and food security. She has extensive international collaborations around the Arctic and has lead a circumarctic caribou and reindeer health assessment program. In the Arctic, Dr. Kutz works closely with aboriginal subsistence hunters to monitor wildlife health and has maintained a popular NSERC funded outreach program in the Canadian North since 2004. Her research interests in parasitology extend beyond the Arctic, where she also collaborates on studies in behavioral ecology and parasitism in non-human primates, wild ungulates, and carnivores.