Alborada Trust funds appointment of Wood to new role; BLOODSTOCK WORLD.

Byline: By Rachel Pagones

JAMES WOOD has been named the Alborada Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science at Cambridge University's Department of Veterinary Medicine.

The new chair, which university officials hope will generate substantial original research into farm animals and horses, will be funded by the Alborada Trust, a charitable foundation set up by Lanwades Stud owner Kirsten Rausing in the name of her famous grey racemare, winner of consecutive Dubai Champion Stakes in 1998 and 1999.

The charity will pay a total of pounds 1.44 million over the next ten years to fund the professorship.

Wood, the director of the Cambridge Infectious Diseases Consortium at the university, and before that leader of the epidemiology group at the Animal Health Trust in Newmarket, will lead the management and development of the equine and farm animal sections of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at Cambridge. His recent research includes study into diseases such as bluetongue and African horse sickness, as well as work on infections in African wildlife that can spread to domestic animals and humans.

He said: "It is a great honour to be appointed to this position, and I look forward to exploiting the exciting opportunities for research here in the university across a range of different equine and farm animal diseases.

"We must address the growing threats to human and animal health that exist in this changing world, and this is be staccomplished through scientific evidence."

Rausing established the Alborada Trust in 2001 with a fund of around pounds 5m. Its main aims are funding veterinary causes in Britain and Ireland, particularly those devoted to animal welfare, and contributing to projects for the relief of human poverty, suffering and illness worldwide.

Among the charity's most recent recipients are the Royal Veterinary College, which was able to buy a CT scanner with its funding.

Recipients of the largest donations in 2006 - the most recent year for which an annual report is available - are headed by the Natural History Museum, which was given pounds 150,000 towards its new eightstorey Darwin Centre; the AHT, which was given pounds 100,000; cancerresearch groups the Macmillan Appeal (pounds 75,000) and Cancer Research UK (pounds 60,000), and Racing Welfare and the Suffolk Punch Trust, which received pounds 25,000 and pounds 10,000.

Professor Duncan Maskell, head of the veterinary medicine department at Cambridge, said of Woods's appointment: "I am very excited about this new professorship. Equine and livestock diseases are important causes of welfare problems and major causes of losses to the economy.

"Strengthening the already excellent research base in Cambridge, especially in infectious diseases, by the establishment of this new chair, and the election of James Wood, provides us with a great opportunity to really make a difference in this important area of activity.

"I am very grateful indeed to the Alborada Trust for enabling this development with their generous donation, and I look forward to a strong and productive relationship with the trustees in the future."

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James Wood: appointment is "a great honour"