In May 2025, Dr. Elora Valderas is our visiting researcher of the month. She is a dedicated parasitologist with a PhD in Veterinary Medicine from the University of León (2022). Elora is currently visiting Kreavet to explore our innovative decision-making system known as Wormwize. This all-in-one decision support system is designed to control parasitic infections on farms smartly and sustainably by integrating grazing management data and laboratory analysis data.
Elora's academic journey began with her doctoral research that focused on controlling gastrointestinal helminth infections in small ruminants. Her work emphasized understanding anthelmintic resistance mechanisms and screening potential anthelmintic compounds. During her PhD, she collaborated with the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Basel, Switzerland) and the Institute of Molecular and Translational Medicine (Olomouc, Czech Republic), setting up a high-throughput screening platform for evaluating 300 anthelmintic compounds.
Following her PhD, Elora joined the University of Manchester's Division of Infection, Immunity, and Respiratory Medicine (UK) as a postdoctoral researcher. Here, she studied immune responses to gastrointestinal nematodes using murine infection models. She later continued her postdoctoral work at the University of Córdoba, focusing on the helminth parasite Fasciola hepatica, aiming to understand immune mechanisms during infection and contributing to vaccine evaluation studies.
Currently, Elora is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Mountain Livestock (CSIC–University of León), working with Dr. María Martínez Valladares' team. Their research focuses on economically important helminths in livestock, emphasizing sustainable parasite control strategies. This includes resistance monitoring, diagnostic development, and evaluating alternative control tools. The team also chairs the European COST Action ENVIRANT (CA23154), which promotes the environmentally responsible use of anthelmintics and explores their broader ecological impact.
Elora's visit to Kreavet is centred around collaborating closely with the Wormwize team to explore the implementation of this innovative system in Spain. Through this collaboration, Elora and the Wormwize team aim to gather valuable insights and foster a partnership that will pave the way for the successful implementation of Wormwize in Spain in the near future.
#wormwize #wormcontrol #sustainablefarming #parasitemanagement #livestockhealth #innovation #collaborativescience #WormsparcEU
