Rate My Professor Keren Dittmer

Professor Keren Dittmer is a Professor of Veterinary Pathology and Group Leader of Pathobiology in the School of Veterinary Science at Massey University. She earned her Bachelor of Veterinary Science from Massey University in 2001 and spent four years in large and small animal veterinary practice in New Zealand and the United Kingdom before returning to Massey in late 2005 to complete her PhD on inherited rickets in Corriedale sheep in 2008. A Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists, she advanced to full Professor effective January 2023. Her career includes serving as team manager of pathobiology and contributing to veterinary education through doctoral supervision. In 2022, she received an AdvanceHE Fellowship, recognizing her teaching excellence.

Dittmer's research specializes in skeletal pathology, vitamin D metabolism across species including horses, cattle, sheep, and wildlife, the FGF23 phosphatonin system, and genetic diseases such as chondrodysplasia in cattle and sheep, retinal degeneration and segmental axonopathy in sheep, and cataracts in cattle. Additional interests encompass angular limb deformities and osteochondrosis in deer, humeral fractures and dropped hock syndrome in dairy cows, bone tumors in dogs, osteoarthritis in horses, osteoporosis in sheep, and bone growth and development in farm animals. She has authored over 80 peer-reviewed articles, including highly cited works like "Vitamin D metabolism and rickets in domestic animals: a review" (Veterinary Pathology, 2011) and "A novel nonsense mutation in the DMP1 gene identified by a genome-wide association study is responsible for inherited rickets in Corriedale sheep" (PLoS One, 2011). Key book chapters include "Bone and Joints" in Jubb, Kennedy & Palmer’s Pathology of Domestic Animals (6th ed., 2015), "Tumors of bone" in Tumors of Domestic Animals (5th ed., 2016), "Genetic Diseases of Cattle" in Diseases of Cattle in Australasia (2nd ed.), and "Metabolic Bone diseases" in Small Animal Medicine (1st ed.). She is an Editorial Adviser for the Journal of Comparative Pathology, President of the New Zealand Society for Veterinary Pathology, and co-leads international reporting guidelines for canine osteosarcoma.