Rate My Professor Alan Young

Alan Young serves as Professor and Research Leader in the Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences at South Dakota State University, where he also holds the position of Assistant Director of the Professional Program in Veterinary Medicine. He earned his BSc and PhD in Immunology from the University of Toronto, focusing on the role of the migratory immune system in disease defense, followed by postdoctoral training in lymphatic physiology. Young's distinguished career includes scientific membership in the Ruminant Immunology Laboratory at the Basel Institute for Immunology and a faculty position in the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. At SDSU, he has advanced research in animal disease diagnostics and therapeutics, earning the Dr. Sherwood and Elizabeth Berg Young Faculty Award in 2003 from the College of Agriculture and Biological Sciences, Biology and Microbiology department, and recognition as the 2011 Distinguished Researcher.

His research employs domestic animal models for biomedical applications, with emphasis on responses to zoonotic diseases and development of vaccines and diagnostics. A pivotal achievement is invention of Medgene Labs' precision platform technology, a baculovirus expression vector system using insect cells for rapid, safe vaccine production without live viruses; it originated from U.S. Department of Homeland Security-funded Rift Valley fever virus research in the mid-2000s. The platform supports vaccines against epizootic hemorrhagic disease, porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, tick infestations, and others, advancing one-health approaches to vector-borne diseases. Key publications include "A Glycoprotein Subunit Vaccine Elicits a Strong Rift Valley Fever Virus Neutralizing Antibody Response in Sheep" (2014), "Effects of Magnolol on UVB-Induced Skin Cancer Development in SKH-1 Mice" (2011), "Alpha-Santalol, a Chemopreventive Agent against Skin Cancer" (2010), and studies on bovine viral diarrhea virus and prion proteins. Young founded Medgene Labs in 2011 as Chief Scientific Officer and currently serves as Chief Technology Officer, leading collaborations with Kansas State University, CDC, USDA centers, and others on Phase I/II SBIR projects and international vaccine efforts.