Who We Are
2008 Young Alumni Achievement Award Recipient
Eric J. Brum, D.V.M., A99, V04
Dr. Eric Brum’s expertise in international veterinary medicine began with a Fulbright scholarship to study elephant ecology in Mozambique. During his studies, Mozambique experienced southern Africa’s worst floods in recorded history, a devastation that revealed the interdependence of small communities and agricultural practices. While a student at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Brum studied the bacterial disease bovine leptospirosis in Mozambique, cattle ranching and wildlife in Brazil, and completed externships at Kruger National Park in South Africa and the USDA Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostician School. In 2006, after working in a practice in Texas and at an emergency clinic in North Carolina, Dr. Brum joined a Tufts team working with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Indonesia, the country worst hit by avian influenza, and where the human mortality rate from the virus is the highest in the world. In 2007, he became the chief technical advisor for the FAO Participatory Disease Surveillance and Response project, which partners with Indonesia’s Ministry of Agriculture to work with local governments to strengthen veterinary services and empower communities to control avian influenza in poultry. Indonesia faces an uphill battle against the virus, and the support and leadership of a strong Tufts team is clearly critical to developing a successful national avian influenza control strategy, with implications for the future of Indonesia and the world.