Team members
A Collaborative & Diverse Group
Dr. Charlotte Doidge
Post Doctoral Reserach Fellow
Charlotte graduated with BSc Veterinary Biosciences from the University of Surrey in 2017. Charlotte completed her PhD at the University of Nottingham Vet School in 2021 which investigated practices and perceptions towards antimicrobial use on sheep and beef farms. She is now working as a Post Doc on the DECIDE and BBSRC projects where she is applying social science and Living Lab approaches to developing new livestock technologies.
Dr. Emily Bushby
Post Doctoral Reserach Fellow
Emily graduated from the University of Lincoln with a BSc in Bioveterinary Science in 2013, following which she completed a MSc by research focusing on pig cognition and welfare. She recently finished my PhD at the University of Leeds which investigated how a nutritional supplement may improve pig performance, health, and welfare during stressful key life events in commercial farming systems. Emily joined the group in September 2022 and is working to measure health and resilience in dairy calves through the use of on-farm technologies.

Francesca Occhiuto
PhD Student
Francesca has a MRes in Animal Behaviour from the University of Nottingham. She started her PhD in 2021 quantifying behavioural variation in dairy calf behaviour from sensor data and their association with health, welfare and production

Nikki Bollard
Research Technician
Nikki supports the team on various research projects as her role as research Technician within the Veterinary School where she has worked since October 2007.

Matthew Thomas
PhD Student
Matthew graduated with MMath (Hons) Mathematics degree from Nottingham Trent University in 2019 where the focus of his thesis was text summarisation and topic modelling algorithms. Matthew started his PhD with the University of Nottingham later in 2019 which focuses on using heterogenous, multisource and multidimensional data mining to develop machine learning algorithms for early prediction of lameness in dairy cattle.
Alice Smith
PhD student
Alice graduated with BSc (Hons) Bio-veterinary Science from Harper Adams University in 2017 and MSc One Health (Infectious Diseases) jointly from the Royal Veterinary College and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2018. She then worked at the Animal and Plant Health Agency in the Department of Epidemiological Sciences before starting her PhD at the University of Nottingham in April 2020. Her PhD is funded by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate and aims to understand the perceptions of British sheep farmers when controlling sheep scab on farms using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

Aleul Bak- Bol
Dr. Jorge A Vázquez Diosdado
Assistant Professor
Jorge has a background in mathematics. He has worked as a post doc since 2013 in Essex and Warwick before joining the the group in 2017. Jorge is Assistant Professor working o projects related to precision technologies where he is applying mathematical, computational and machine learning tools to tackle problems in biotechnology. He is particularly interested in social behaviour of animals


PhD Student
Anna graduated in 2018 with a degree in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Nairobi. Anna started her PhD in 2022. Her PhD is funded by Industry partner Chordata. In her PhD research she will be looking to understand and evaluate the needs of dairy stakeholders (dairy farmers and vets) in relation to precision dairy health technologies.
Other PhD's Supervision
Tom Clough
Anna Ferreira
Past Team Members
Charles Carslake
Amy Jackson
Eliana Lima
Yiorgos Vittis
Jurgen Mitch
Guilana Miguel Pacheco