Speakers - VetPD

Emanuela Dalla Costa

DVM, PhD, Dipl.ECAWBM (AWSEL)

European Specialist in Animal Welfare and Behavioural Medicine

Italy University of Milan, Italy

Emanuela graduated in Veterinary Medicine at the University of Milan in 2009. In 2010, she won the Lifelong Learning Programme Leonardo da Vinci scholarship to perform an internship at the University of Lincoln, Department of Biological Science under the supervision of Professor Daniel S. Mills. In 2011, she became a phD student of the European Project Animal Welfare Indicators (AWIN) and, in 2014, Emanuela developed the Horse Grimace Scale (HGS) a pioneering pain indicator based on facial expressions. Since her PhD in Animal Production, she worked at the University of Milan as post-doc and research fellow. She became a Diplomate of the European College of Animal Welfare and Behavioural Medicine in 2014. Emanuela’s research encompasses various aspects of animal welfare. She is interested in pain assessment in horses and how pain can influence welfare and human-animal relationship, the use of biomarkers as innovative indicators for pain assessment. Emanuela has published over 40 articles in peer-reviewed veterinary journals and lectures regularly at national and international courses/conferences on equine pain assessment and welfare.