Tina Herfel, PhD

Areas of Expertise

+实验室动物营养
+营养免疫学和微生物学我n swine and poultry
+Design and formulate diets for rodents, swine, poultry, canines, rabbits, drosophilia, and non-human primates

Specialties

+Animal nutrition
+Custom research diets
+Customer support
+技术支援
+Product guidance
+Animal welfare
+机构动物护理和使用委员会（IACUC）

What are your responsibilities at Envigo?

My primary responsibility is supporting custom diets. I work with researchers to discuss their study designs and ensure the diet they’re using is the best fit for their desired outcome. I collaborate with customers on available options and help them make their choices. I also do some of our ingredient quality testing on our custom diets and answer technical questions about our standard diet line. I conduct sales training for employees, seminars for customers, and create website content and summaries of different diet options depending on the research field and other factors the customers may be facing.

What inspired you to pursue a career in science?

I’ve always been really interested in animal health. I wanted to be a vet when I was younger and because of that, had an interest in animal science. I had a summer job after my freshman year in high school working in a nutrition lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I really enjoyed it. I continued my education there and worked in the same lab throughout my entire college career.

我的使用和对营养的兴趣随着时间的推移而发展。早期，它是农业生产。我以为它是如此令人迷人的饮食变化如何在生产产出中产生大变化。我正在寻找骨骼形成以及如何对饮食进行小调整可以提高家禽鸟类的骨质。所以，最后，您正在制作这些鸡蛋生产的鸟类的生命一点，因为它们具有更强的骨骼系统。

然后我开始将我的知识转化为营养成为人体健康。我很幸运能够在我们用猪的实验室中工作，了解如何修饰对婴儿配方的修饰影响显影免疫系统和微生物群。我真的很喜欢翻译科学的方面。我认为这就是为什么我在泰尔拉德结束。我正在与真正试图将学习模型转化为人类结果的研究人员合作。这都是突出的工作，翻译科学的味道抓住了我。在此之后，我对农业研究并不是很感兴趣。我喜欢帮助，这似乎是最好的。我可以真正对这里的研究产生最大的影响，而不是只是研究营养的一个小方面。

在角色中成功的一些关键属性是什么？

I think being collaborative is really important. Recognizing your own strength and the strengths within the group -- knowing who you can rely on and trusting them. That’s pretty much what I do. I collaborate with researchers so I have to identify, ‘Okay. How much do you know about diet? How much do I need to teach you? And, what type of questions do I need to ask you?’

保持兴趣也很重要。我认为是一生学习者真的很有帮助。总是想了解更多的是真的很有帮助。几乎每天我都阅读了一篇科学文章或提出一个问题，即我不一定知道答案并必须弄清楚。

What are the best parts of your job?

I especially like working with the nutrition team. All of us have different backgrounds so we all look at nutrition issues a little differently. We have some really great, intense conversations about how and why we should formulate a certain way. I liken it to herding cats because none of us do anything exactly the same.

I also get really excited when I see diets I worked on really hard get published. I'm always working on the front part of a research study. You always have the best intentions and really hope it works out. So for me, that’s the cherry on top. After all that hard work, getting a Google alert when something’s published and thinking, ‘Oh, I remember that diet and exactly why we made those few choices.’ It’s fun to read what the scientist was able to learn by feeding that diet. It also extends my knowledge.

What career achievements make you proud?

I really think helping design liver disease (Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis or NASH) diets has been pretty influential in my career. We created them in early 2014. All of the knowledge I had accumulated - working with different researchers and reading lots of papers - led to us being able to create an entire marketing campaign on the diets. We highlighted the different options in a quick document to send to new researchers interested in the NASH field. It gives them a breakdown of the various types of available diets, some of the caveats with feedings and what to expect. I’m very proud of that because I feel like it’s something that helps many different researchers and it’s a tangible thing I’ve created.

It also makes me really proud to see people publish the custom diets we’re making. That means when they contacted us, we were able to assist them in their study design by creating these diets and that the study design held up to peer review. It created results that were meaningful enough to be published. So, to me, that’s the ultimate finish line -- to make sure the diets we’re making meet the quality of peer review.

在Envigo之外，你最喜欢的一些事情是什么？B0B体育平台下载

我有两个年轻的男孩，所以我喜欢家庭时间。我的丈夫和我花在后院外面的男孩们，踢足球，只是跑来跑去。我现在真的去了健身训练营。我的丈夫也是一位科学家，喜欢使用微生物学，从头开始制作很多啤酒和葡萄酒。我不帮助他做到，但我喜欢品尝它。

Pleasecontact usif you have a question for Tina or would like to learn more about our laboratory animal diet capabilities.