Alexandre Rico Fernandez

Alexandre Rico Fernandez

Alexandre Rico Fernandez graduated in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, in 2021. He began the Master in Preventive Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis Veterinary Medicine School in Fall 2022 and earned a Caixa Rural Galega Tomás Notario Vacas Scholarship. He is interested in pursuing graduate studies to learn quantitative tools that he can apply to dairy production medicine, but he is also interested in Economics Health and Agribusiness. In the future he hopes to become proficient in modeling and design tools to support decision making. On dairies, this specifically can contribute to the economic and environmental sustainability by identifying approaches to improve animal health and performance and, therefore, overall farm efficiency. Also, he have a strong drive to design and validate algorithm based real-time decisions tools using readily available on-farm data.

Alex grew up in a rural environment, where dairy is the main agricultural commodity. His father is a dairy veterinarian, and his family owns a dairy farm. During his childhood, he and his brothers used to accompany their father in his work as a dairy clinical veterinarian. Growing up in this environment allowed him to see first-hand the challenges faced by the dairy industry as well as to witness from within all the progress implementing preventive medicine on farms brought over the last twenty years. His personal motivation is none other than to add value to my community. Watching animal scientists and preventive medicine specialist playing an important role in people’s lives by providing evidence-based knowledge and resources is the inner force for him to want to become one of them.