Marcus Kehrli | Director
Agricultural Research Service U.S.D.A.

Dr. Marcus E. Kehrli, Jr. is Director of the National Animal Disease Center of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service and has 38 years of experience in infectious, metabolic and emerging diseases research.  NADC conducts over $34.7 M of congressionally-appropriated animal health and food safety research.  NADC scientists also have a large extramural research program with funding from various public and private sector sources.  From 2003 until his selection as Center Director in May of 2013, Dr. Kehrli was the Research Leader of the Virus and Prion Diseases Research Unit at the NADC where he led a $10 M annual research program covering a broad, multidisciplinary program of applied and fundamental research on bacterial, viral and prion diseases in wildlife, cattle and swine. For 5 years prior to that, Dr. Kehrli was a Principal Research Investigator for Pfizer Global Research and Development, Veterinary Medicine Pharmaceutical Discovery, where his research focused on a pursuit of novel therapeutic solutions for livestock diseases.  His research career at the NADC began in 1982 investigating how periparturient immunosuppression contributes to postpartum disease until 1998 when he joined Pfizer Animal Health.  Dr. Kehrli’s primary area of expertise is immunity to infectious diseases of cattle and swine.