Rate My Professor Alan Young

Alan Young is a Professor and Research Leader in the Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences at South Dakota State University, where he also serves as 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. Following his doctoral studies, he completed postdoctoral training as a Fellow in the Trauma Research Institute at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto, investigating lymphatic physiology. He then joined the Ruminant Immunology Laboratory at the Basel Institute for Immunology as a Scientific Member. After the institute's closure, he held a faculty position in the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School before assuming his current role at South Dakota State University.

Dr. Young's research centers on immunology, with emphasis on domestic animals' immune responses to zoonotic diseases, lymphocyte migration and recirculation, B cell trafficking, and prion diseases including scrapie in sheep, chronic wasting disease in deer, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy. He founded the Multistate Research Committee addressing BSE in the United States and served as Co-Principal Investigator for Rift Valley Fever vaccine development through the Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases at Kansas State University. Since 2004, he has advanced translational technologies, authoring successful Phase I and II SBIR projects in collaboration with federal laboratories and institutions in the United States and Canada. In 2011, he established Medgene Labs LLC, where he serves as Chief Scientific Officer, developing vaccines and diagnostics for diseases such as Rift Valley Fever Virus, Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease, and Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus, with partnerships including the Centers for Disease Control, Department of Homeland Security, and University of Toronto. Key publications include 'Classical natural ovine scrapie prions detected in practical volumes of blood by lamb and transgenic mouse bioassays' (2015), 'The Skin, a Novel Niche for Recirculating B Cells' (2012), 'Salivary prions in sheep and deer' (2012), 'Classical scrapie prions in ovine blood are associated with B lymphocytes and platelet-rich plasma' (2011), and 'Effects of magnolol on UVB-induced skin cancer development in mice' (2011). He received the Dr. Sherwood and Elizabeth Berg Young Faculty Award in 2003 from South Dakota State University.