Home | Vanessa Herder

Dr. Vanessa Herder, PhD

My Book is available

FAQ about the book

What role does animal pathology play in our everyday lives?
Is your pet a special family member?
The experiences in this book are curious, interesting, funny, and thought-provoking, and range from veterinary school to coronavirus research.

For who is the book of interest?

Everyone, who likes animals, has pets and is interested in the relationship between animals and humans.

Do I have to be a scientiest to understand the book?

No. The language of the book is directed to everyone.

What can I expect to read in the book?

It is a kind of "James Harriot" from a veterinary pathologist. Real experiences from working as vet in diagnostic and research.

The book is about pathology, what does it mean?

Pathology for me means to understand life and studying how fascinating the mammalian body is.

Vanessa's Book

Vanessa published her first book in 2023 and the translation to English is currently in progress and it will be out mid 2024.

Prof. Dr. Peter Doherty, Nobelprize for Medicine, 1996
about Vanessa's book:

‘Can sauna therapy be recommended for preventing and treating respiratory infections like COVID? Is opening the window wide to allow all that (likely cold) fresh air to blow-in really a good strategy for dealing with a viral pneumonia? Remember that old nursery rhyme: ‘I had a little bird and its name was Enza, I opened the window and in-flew-enza.’ At least in the colder countries, influenza is mainly a winter disease. But is it better to sit in the fug of a tightly enclosed space rather than to embrace the robust virtues of the fresh air ‘diet”? Well, ‘virtue is its own reward’, and maybe it’s more useful to stay warm and, perhaps, invest in one of little portable air filters. When it comes to health, common sense is not always good sense, and traditional ideas aren’t always based in evidence. Accepted wisdom and reality are not inevitably aligned. It’s defining the reality, not respecting the myth, that moves us forward!

Expert-Advisor for Petbook

Vanessa is working with Petbook for high quality information about diseases in animals. Published articles contain information about animal diseases, like canine epilepsy, intoxications, foxes and more.

Vanessa's Research

Vanessa Herder is a scientist and experimental pathologist and her work helps to understand why some mammalian hosts during virus infections show a mild clinical outcome and some progress to a lethal phenotype; she is using a pathology-focussed approach with spatial-omics to identify specific pathways of the immune response which are conserved within multiple species fighting the virus to understand the immunopathology of severe infections translationally; and in times of the early post-pandemic phase she focusses on the ONE HEALTH strategy in her research.

Vanessa is more than happy to share her insights into and her fascination about disease pathogenesis and if you’re equally as passionate about the mammalian immune response, virusinfections, pathology or you want to know more about what Vanessa does, get in touch
hello@vanessa-herder.com

Since 2021 I am part of the Soroptimist community.

Vision of SoroptimismWomen and girls will achieve their individual and collective potential, realise aspirations and have an equal voice in creating strong, peaceful communities worldwide.

Mission of SoroptimismSoroptimists transform the lives and status of women and girls through education, empowerment and enabling opportunities.

Soroptimist

Planting a Redwood tree in Glasgow with Lord Provost in 2021 and meeting Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in Edinburgh in 2022.

Vanessa's Charity work

She is a member of the Soroptimist community.

Vanessa met Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in Holyroad in Edinburgh in 2022.

Nicola Ferguson Sturgeon is a Scottish politician who served as First Minister of Scotland and Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) from 2014 to 2023.

Since 2021, Vanessa is part of the Soroptimist community.

Vision of Soroptimism

Women and girls will achieve their individual and collective potential, realise aspirations and have an equal voice in creating strong, peaceful communities worldwide.

Mission of SoroptimismSoroptimists transform the lives and status of women and girls through education, empowerment and enabling opportunities.

Public Speaking

Vanessa loves speaking about her work and zoonotic diseases: infections which are transmitted between animals and humans. Pathology is always a central part in her talks as her passion is it to study how diseases work.

Vanessa's publications

Vanessa's publications in peer-reviewed journals you can find here:

👉 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Herder+V&cauthor_id=34581622

👉 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4814-1382

👉 https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=giDjpZ4AAAAJ

Vanessa's journey.

Interview with Alissa Stein about Vanessa's journey to become a pathologist.

Vanessa's Sport

Vanessa loves lifting heavy weights.
She is an active crossfit athlete and loves team competitions.
In 2024, she did her first Hyrox and ATHX events. With her team partner, they came first in their age group at the ATHX event in Glasgow.
In 2018, she competed as an individual athlete at the German Throwdown and came 8th.
#strongishappy

About Vanessa.

Vanessa's field of expertise is the mammalian anti-viral immune response.

With her research she focusses on the role of the innate and adaptive immune response during virus infections. She is dedicated to understand what drives some hosts during virus infection severyl ill and some not.

Find her publications here:

Pubmed

GoogleScholar

ORCID

She is also an author of a book sharing her experience working as a veterinary pathologist.

Veterinary Experimental Pathologist

She has more than 15 years of experience in designing pathology-focussed experiments during my work in academia for my own research and also in national and international collaborations for others.

Veterinary Diagnostic Pathologist
The health of your companion animal depends on the correct histopathological diagnosis. She worked as a diagnostic pathologist in academia during her residency in pathology and also as a board-certified pathologist (Dipl. ECVP) since 2015.

Her focus has always been equine pathology; dogs, cats and wildlife. She also worked on forensic cases and has a special passion for difficult and complex cases.