Graduated from Oklahoma State University and then completed an internship, internal medicine residency, and PhD program in Parasitology at the University of Georgia.  Dr. Lappin is the Kenneth W. Smith Professor in Small Animal Clinical Veterinary Medicine at Colorado State University and is the director of the “Center for Companion Animal Studies”.  The Center is housed in the Translational Medicine Institute at CSU.   Dr. Lappin is the chair of the WSAVA One Health Committee. His principal areas of interest are prevention of infectious diseases, the upper respiratory disease complex, infectious causes of fever, infectious causes of diarrhea, and zoonoses.