Michael J. Burridge retired from the University of Florida in 2009, returning to his veterinary roots managing Upson Downs Morgans, the horse farm where he and his wife Karen breed Morgan horses.
GAINESVILLE, FL, December 27, 2018 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Marquis Who's Who, the world's premier publisher of biographical profiles, is proud to present Michael J. Burridge, Ph.D., with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. An accomplished listee, Dr. Burridge celebrates many years of experience in his professional network, and has been noted for achievements, leadership qualities, and the credentials and successes he has accrued in his field. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.
Dr. Michael Burridge began his scientific career as a veterinary student at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1961, earning a Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine & Surgery (BVM&S) degree in 1966. While at the University of Edinburgh he became very interested in the opportunities for veterinary graduates in tropical medicine through contacts with faculty at the Centre for Tropical Veterinary Medicine. As a result he worked with two fellow veterinary students to organize a University of Edinburgh East African Veterinary Expedition which, immediately following graduation, took him to Uganda to work at the East African Trypanosomiasis Research Organisation (EATRO) under the direction of Dr. Matthew Cunningham on the epidemiology of recent outbreaks of human sleeping sickness on the northern shores of Lake Victoria.
Dr. Burridge returned to England to work as a veterinarian in Woking from 1967-68. Then in 1968 Dr. Cunningham from EATRO was appointed director of a United Nations regional project in East Africa to develop improved methods for the control of East Coast fever, a fatal tickborne disease of cattle in Africa, and he offered Dr. Burridge a position on the project. Thus Dr. Burridge worked in Kenya from 1968-73, supervising the project's experimental farm and cattle and developing improved serological tests for the disease.
In 1973 Dr. Burridge left the project in Kenya to pursue graduate studies at the University of California in Davis. There he graduated with a Master of Preventive Veterinary Medicine (MPVM) degree in 1974 and a PhD degree in epidemiology in 1976. Immediately after graduate studies Dr. Burridge was recruited by the new College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Florida as a founding faculty member. His position was to develop a teaching program in epidemiology and public health for the veterinary students and to establish a funded research program in tropical veterinary medicine with emphasis on prevention of introduction into Florida and the United States of foreign animal diseases. In 1982, after establishing his teaching and research programs, Dr. Burridge was appointed Director of the Center of Tropical Animal Health at the University of Florida where he initiated a research program in the Caribbean on heartwater, a tickborne rickettsial disease fatal to cattle, sheep and goats which is endemic to Africa and had been introduced recently to the French West Indies. To combat the threat of heartwater to the United States it was essential to establish a research base in Africa and thus Dr. Burridge made contact with Dr. Andy Norval, a renowned acarologist working on heartwater in Zimbabwe, and together they obtained funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to initiate a major research program on the disease at the University of Florida with field operations in Zimbabwe and later in South Africa.
The USAID-funded heartwater research project ran from 1985-2005, developing improved diagnostic tests and vaccines for heartwater, developing a novel pheromone-based tick decoy system for control of heartwater vectors and establishing a graduate training program. The research resulted in 13 US and foreign patents. The tick research was further expanded to develop a self-medicating applicator for the control of both ticks and other parasites of primarily wild ungulates and it resulted in an additional 10 US and foreign patents.
In 1997 Dr. Burridge launched a research program designed to control the exotic ticks being imported into the United States through the poorly regulated international trade in reptiles. The results of this program led to the publication of a book written by Dr. Burridge on the threats posed by non-native and invasive ticks to human and animal health in the United States which was published by the University Press of Florida in 2011.
During his career at the University of Florida, Dr. Burridge was an associate professor from 1976-82 and a professor from 1982 until his retirement in 2009. He served as Chairman of the Department of Infectious Diseases from 1984-93. He was the veterinary medicine consultant to Stedman's Medical Dictionary from 1982-99, he was a member of the Committee on Animal Health of the National Academy of Sciences from 1980-83 and a board member of the International Laveran Foundation from 1991-94. He undertook several international consultancies, primarily related to tickborne diseases or tick control, for the United Nations in Sudan (1978), for the World Bank in the Democratic Republic of Congo (1982), for the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (1984) and for the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) (1986) in the Caribbean, for Winrock International in India (1987 & 1991) and for USDA in Egypt (1990). He retired from the University of Florida in 2009, returning to his veterinary roots managing Upson Downs Morgans, the horse farm where he and his wife Karen breed Morgan horses.
In recognition of outstanding contributions to his profession and the Marquis Who's Who community, Dr. Burridge has been featured on the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement website. Please visit www.ltachievers.com for more information about this honor.
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