ESVC Oral Abstract Presenters Bio

Kentaro Kurogochi graduated with my DVM from Yamaguchi University in 2015. I worked in general clinical practice until 2018. Currently, I am engaged in cardiology for small animals at JASMINE Veterinary Cardiovascular Medical Center and enrolled in a doctoral program at Azabu University.


ESVC-O-2
Giulio Menciotti

Giulio Menciotti obtained a DVM degree from Padua University (Italy) in 2012, defending a thesis on echocardiography in dogs affected by myxomatous mitral valve disease. Shortly after completion of his DVM degree, he started a PhD in Biomedical and Veterinary Sciences at the VA-MD College of Veterinary Medicine (VMCVM) and graduated in 2017. Immediately after, he started a residency program (American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine - Cardiology) and a Master’s Degree at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital of the VMCVM. His main research fields involve canine mitral valve disease with a special focus on valvular morphologic analysis using cutting-edge non-invasive diagnostic imaging through three-dimensional echocardiography and the role of molecular signaling pathways in the disease.


ESVC-O-3
Margarida Silva

Margarida graduated in Veterinary Medicine in October 2019, in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Lisbon University, Portugal, after completing a four-month long curricular traineeship at the Small Animal Teaching Hospital, University of Liverpool. She’s currently working as a veterinary surgeon for Medivet while collaborating in this study with SAVSNET


ESVC-O-4
Ananda Pires

Ananda Pires is finishing the third year of her cardiology residency at the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC), University of Guelph. She obtained her veterinary degree in 2015 from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in her home country of Brazil. After graduation, she remained at the same University for an Internal Medicine residency before moving to Canada in 2018. She then completed a small animal rotating internship at the Ontario Veterinary College. She has remained at OVC for her cardiology residency, and she is currently a PhD student at the same institution. Her research focus is on the influence of age on cardiac remodeling and function in cats.


ESVC-O-5
Michelle Colpitts

Dr. Colpitts obtained her veterinary degree from the University of Guelph in 2012, followed by a Rotating Internship in upstate New York. She worked for two years as an emergency veterinarian and pursued a Cardiology Internship in her home city of Toronto. In 2017, she completed a Cardiovascular Imaging Research Fellowship through a human hospital in Michigan where she contributed to numerous research publications before returning to the Ontario Veterinary College for her Cardiology Residency. She completed her clinical training and associated Doctor of Veterinary Science degree in 2020, and has been specializing in small animal cardiology in Toronto.


ESVC-O-6
Marjolein den Toom

Marjolein den Toom graduated as a veterinarian at the University of Utrecht in 2005. After 4 years of working in practice, she returned to the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Utrecht. Here she went through a general rotation and her specialist training as a cardiologist to successfully complete it in 2018.
Currently she works as a cardiologist (EBVS, European Veterinary Specialist Cardiology Companion Animals) at the emergency and referral clinic of IVC/Evidensia in Nieuwegein, the Netherlands. Her main research and interest areas are congenital heart disease and pulmonary hypertension in the dog and feline hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.  She currently combines her clinical work with her PhD research into the (genetic) background of congenital heart disease in dogs, in collaboration with researchers from the faculty of veterinary medicine of Utrecht University.

In addition, she is the head of the cardiology department of IVC/Evidensia in the Netherlands and is responsible for the development of post graduate education in cardiology for the Evidensia Academy in the Netherlands.


ESVC-O-7
Alessandra Franchini

After my degree from University of Parma, I have sought to broaden my knowledge in veterinary cardiology with two periods of voluntary externship focused on this topic. I’m currently a PhD candidate in Biomedical and Veterinary science under the supervision of Dr. Borgarelli. The research projects that I’ve been developing during the last three years of my PhD are focusing on myxomatous mitral valve disease in dogs and on three-dimensional echocardiography in dogs affected by this disease.


ESVC-O-8
Luke Dutton

Luke graduated from the University of Liverpool in 2015 and spent a year in a busy first opinion practice. He then embarked on a masters of research in canine stem cell biology, followed by a PhD at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in feline pluripotent stem cell biology. Following a cardiology internship at the University of Cambridge, Luke began his cardiology residency at the RVC in 2021.


ESVC-O-9
Andrea Zoia

Andrea Zoia, born the 06/10/1966 in Rome, Italy. Qualified in veterinary medicine with full mark and honours in March 1998 at Perugia University, Italy. In 2001–2002 Intern at “The Royal Veterinary College”, University of London, England; and in 2004-2008 small animal internal medicine resident at the Veterinary University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. In 2007 awarded with the Certificate in Small Animal Medicine (Cert. SAM, Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons) and in 2010 awarded with the European Diploma of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ECVIM-Ca) Diploma. In October 2020 defended his PhD thesis at Utrecht University on Enhanced systemic fibrinolysis in dogs with abdominal and pleural effusions. Since 2011 he has been employed as a clinician in Small Animal Medicine at the “San Marco Veterinary Clinic”, Padua, Italy, where now covers the position of Head of the Division.


ESVC-O-10
Emilie Van Renterghem

Emilie is currently a specialized intern in Cardiology at the University of Liège in Belgium. After completing a specialized internship in Emergency and Critical care, it became her aware that her biggest passion is Cardiology. It is thus her goal to become a resident in Cardiology.


ESVC-O-11
Joao Escalda

Joao graduated from the University of Lisbon, Portugal, in 2014. He moved to the UK in 2017, where he first completed a rotating internship at North Downs Specialist Referrals (NDSR), followed by a cardiology internship at the University of Liverpool. In 2021 he became a RCVS recognised Advanced Practitioner in veterinary cardiology. Joao has worked in both first opinion and referral practice as a veterinary cardiologist. He is currently an ECVIM-CA cardiology resident at the Queen’s Veterinary School Hospital, University of Cambridge.


ESVC-O-12
Jonathan Paul Mochel

Dr. Jon Mochel obtained his Veterinary Medical Degree from the National Veterinary School of Alfort. He completed his Doctorate studying Neurosciences in collaboration with the College de France and received the Silver Medal from Paris XII for his work. Dr. Mochel holds a MS in Pharmacology and Pharmacokinetics and is a Diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Pharmacology and Toxicology (ECVPT). He completed his Ph.D at Leiden University, with a focus on the mathematical modeling of the renin-angiotensin system for cardiovascular diseases. He is a founder of the Animal Health Modeling & Simulation Society which aims at promoting the dissemination of mathematical modeling in Veterinary Sciences. Dr. Mochel is a Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Iowa State University and a Fellow of the American Academy of Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics and an ad hoc Study Section Reviewer for the US National Science Foundation, the UK Medical Research Council and the CNRS/INSERM ATIP-Avenir Program. He is currently the President Elect of the European Association of Veterinary Pharmacology and Toxicology. His research pertains to the analysis of clinical data obtained from spontaneous animal models of human diseases to bridge the knowledge gap between experimental models and patients. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications in select biomedical journals and is the co-founder of LifEngine Animal Health, a Y Combinator company developing gene editing solutions for canine oncology, and 3D Health Solutions, a platform for efficient drug screening in pharmaceutical research.


ESVC-O-13
Rebecca Langhorn

Rebecca Langhorn graduated in 2007 from the University of Copenhagen. Following two years in private referral practice, she returned to the university as a PhD student, working with validation and clinical application of myocardial injury biomarkers in canine and feline critical disease. She defended her PhD in 2013 and subsequently completed a residency in companion animal internal medicine while employed as assistant professor in internal and emergency medicine. She passed her ECVIM board exams in 2019 and is currently employed as associate professor in emergency medicine at the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences, University of Copenhagen. Her primary clinical and research interests are hematology, hemostasis, and myocardial injury.


ESVC-O-14
Nora Schreiber

Dr Nora Schreiber graduated at the University of Zurich in 2018. After that she completed a Doctoral Thesis work at the Institute of Parasitology of the same University. Shorty after she started an Internship program followed by a ECVIM-CA (cardiology) residency at the University of Zurich, where she is currently working as a last year of resident.


ESVC-O-15
Melanie Hezzell

Melanie graduated from Cambridge in 1997. She worked in mixed and small animal practices in the UK, Australia and New Zealand for 10 years, during which time she gained the RCVS Certificates in Veterinary Diagnostic Imaging and Veterinary Cardiology. She then undertook a rotating small animal internship at the Royal Veterinary College, followed by a PhD on the epidemiology of mitral valve disease at the same institution. Following a residency in veterinary cardiology at the University of Pennsylvania, she joined the University of Bristol as a Senior Lecturer in Cardiology, where she enjoys balancing clinical work with teaching and research.


ESVC-O-16
Alice Cristina Victorino Machado

I graduated from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Lisbon in 2018 following completion of my master’s degree thesis entitled "A retrospective review of aortic Stenosis in 274 dogs in Scotland: clinical presentation and diagnosis". Shortly after, I started practising as a veterinary surgeon in primary small animal companion care in Scotland, a position I held for 18 months. However, my keen interest in veterinary cardiology and my passion for evidence-based knowledge and clinical research prompted me to pursue a specialist career. I have since completed a rotating internship at Southern Counties Veterinary Specialists (Hampshire, UK), followed by a junior clinical training scholarship at the Queen's Veterinary School Hospital (University of Cambridge, UK). It was at the University of Cambridge that the idea for the left atrial fractional shortening project was born and was therefore developed under the supervision and guidance of the senior clinical cardiologists José Novo Matos and Joel Silva.

I have since become a cardiology intern at Counties Veterinary Specialists and hope to become a specialist in small animal cardiology in the future.


ESVC-O-17
Altin Cala


ESVC-O-18
Caterina Puccinelli

Caterina graduated in 2019 in Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pisa (110/110 cum laude) and currently is a third year PhD student in diagnostic imaging at the University of Pisa. She is author and co-author of publications in international journals and has given talks at national and international conferences and has been lecturer for some courses at University of Pisa.


ESVC-O-19
Giovanni Grosso

Giovanni Grosso – DVM, PhD studentGiovanni Grosso graduated with honours (110 cum laude/110) in 2019 in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Pisa with a thesis on "echocardiographic classification proposal of mitral valve disease in dogs". He had a student traineeship at Teaching Hospital of the University of Pisa where it took part in the Cardiology Service, Internal Medicine Service and Emergency and Intensive Care Unit. He had a visiting period at the AlbaVet Clinic of Glasgow (Scotland) in 2015 and a visiting period at the Anicura Istituto Veterinario Novara between 2019-2020. In November 2020 he started the PhD program in Veterinary Cardiology at Department of Veterinary Sciences at the Teaching Hospital of the University of Pisa with a project on “cardiac remodeling in dogs with right heart diseases: clinical aspects and new echocardiographic parameters”. He is the author and co-author of publications in national and international journals and has been author and co-authors of poster presentation and oral presentation at international congress.


ESVC-O-20
Marco Mazzarella

Graduated in 2016 at the University of Bologna. In 2018 moved to the United Kingdom where he worked in a first opinion practice in Wales for one year. After that he underwent a rotating internship in a referral centre in Essex. After a short period back in first opinion, he went back to Essex to complete a cardiology specific internship. In 2021 he started a Masters by Research at The University of Edinburgh with a project about vascular dysfunction in dogs with myxomatous mitral valve disease and he is due to start a PhD programme in the same field at The University of Bristol.


ESVC-O-21
Stefano Battaia

Dr. Battaia graduated from the University of Bologna, Italy, in 2012. After an externship at the cardiology department of the University of Zurich and a rotating internship at "Clinica Veterinaria Malpensa", he has worked in the cardiology and internal medicine department of "Ospedale Veterinario I Portoni Rossi” and "Clinica Veterinaria Malpensa". In 2019 he started an ECVIM-CA (Cardiology) Residency Program under the supervision of Dr. Santilli, dipl. ECVIM-CA (Cardiology) and Dr. Perego, dipl. ECVIM-CA (Cardiology).


ESVC-O-22
Stefano Oricco

Stefano Oricco graduated at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Turin, Italy, with a thesis that deals with echocardiography.He joined the Centro Veterinario Imperiese where he focused primarily on cardiology, intensive care, anesthesia, and ultrasound. He has been teacher at Point-of-Care ultrasound and echocardiographic courses. He has been speaker at many conferences on topics about cardiology and anesthesia, with themes about hemodynamics, monitoring and ultrasound assessment in the critical patient.He has been teacher at acid-base and electrolyte disorders courses and at the University of Parma. He is author of national and international scientific works, and national and international congress abstracts on cardiology and critical care topics. He is author of the text “Ecografia Point-of-Care nel cane e nel gatto” Edizioni Edra 2020. In 2021 he has started an alternative residency programme in Cardiology (ECVIM-CA) at University of Parma.

ESVC-O-23
Lisbeth Høier Olsen

ESVC-O-24
Lisbeth Høier Olsen