Sept. 5, 2018
HPI Visiting Speakers: Mani Lejeune and Yoko Nagamori
On September 5th HPI hosted two great speakers: Mani Lejeune and Yoko Nagamori.
Mani Lejeune is a veterinarian from India who completed his PhD at University of Calgary and subsequently worked as a wildlife parasitologist there during a few years. He then moved to Ithaca, NY to work at Cornell University as the director of the clinical parasitology laboratory. His talk was about trends in veterinary parasitology diagnostic, such as spurious parasitism in dogs, standardization of fecal egg count tests, use of molecular techniques for diagnostic confirmation, and zoonotic parasites encountered routinely in his lab. Mani stimulated a great discussion about careers in parasitology for either veterinarians and professionals with a biology backgrounds.
Yoko Nagamori graduated as a veterinarian from Iowa State University and then completed a joint master of science and residency in parasitology at Oklahoma State University before getting a job as assistant professor and head of the parasitology diagnostic lab there.
Her talk explored her career path and the main challenges and rewards she faces in her routine. I had met Yoko before at the American Association of Veterinary Parasitology and what grabs my attention is how passionate about her work she is. Every time she presents it seems like it’s the coolest parasite ever! I think HPI trainees noticed that too, given the many laughs during her talk.
We were very lucky to have both of them visit the University at the same time. The talk took place from 9-11 am and went smoothly and informally in my opinion, with a lot of questions from the audience; HPI kindly provided coffee and snacks. Mani and Yoko also met with a few trainees interested in discussing more about this career option.