AASV Announces 2024 Outstanding Swine Academic of the Year Award
Rodger Main, DVM, was honored with the 2024 American Association of Swine Veterinarians’ (AASV) Outstanding Swine Academic of the Year award for his excellence in teaching, research and service to the swine veterinary profession.
Main received his bachelor's degree and DVM from Iowa State University and PhD from Kansas State University. He is a professor and director of the Iowa State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (ISU VDL) with a team of 180 faculty and staff who play an active role on the frontlines of U.S. animal agriculture. They process about 120,000 diagnostic case submissions and conducting more than 1.5 million diagnostic assays each year.
Main's peers credit his commitment and innovation as key to transforming the ISU VDL into a global leader in food animal diagnostic medicine.
"Main has also been serving as the principal investigator of the U.S. Swine Health Improvement Plan endeavor that centers on bringing industry, state and federal partners together to establish an officially recognized platform for safeguarding, certifying, and bettering the health of U.S. swine and the longer-term competitiveness of the U.S. pork industry," AASV said in a release.
Main's list of AASV accomplishments is long. He's a member of the AASV committee on transboundary and emerging diseases and has served on many others. He delivered the Alex Hogg Memorial Lecture in 2019. He has been recognized for his outstanding service to the swine industry with the Allen D. Leman Science in Practice Award in 2008, the AASV Howard Dunne Memorial Award in 2017, the Iowa State University Award for Outstanding Achievement in Extension or Professional Practice in 2020, and the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians Distinguished Service Award in 2022.
“I am most certainly humbled and honored to be recognized by my peers in this way. I feel extremely fortunate to have been given the opportunity to work with and for so many great people over the course of my career," Main said. "I fully realize that any such recognition that comes my way is simply an acknowledgment and appreciation for the contributions being made by those of which I have the good fortune to work with and be supported by both in the workplace and at home, and for that, I am indeed most certainly grateful.”
