Talk about being in the right place at the right time.
The time was Marisa Rotolo’s first year in veterinary school at Iowa State.
The place was a friend’s office in the college’s Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.
It was there that fate intervened in Rotolo’s future career as a swine veterinarian.
“I stopped by a friend’s office in the VDL and I was feeling a bit hopeless about securing a job at the college,” Rotolo recalled. “As fate would have it, Dr. Rodger Main stopped in and asked if we knew anyone who needed a job.”
Here’s where right place and right time collided for Rotolo.
“I told him I was looking for a job and he asked me if I had any pig experience and what my last contact with pigs was,” she said.
Rotolo had no experience. Main took on chance, taking her to a pig farm the next day. He explained the position, a research associate on a study that focused on oral fluids.
There was no looking back.
“I was hooked,” Rotolo said. “I loved working with pigs and producers. I was drawn to the driven and supportive nature of the swine industry.
“Every person I met took the time to walk me through production and swine medicine.”
The very fact that Rotolo got hooked on swine medicine is surprising given her background. Growing up in Southern California, her connection with animal agriculture was limited to watching the animated version of “Charlotte’s Web.”
Today, Dr. Marisa Rotolo (DVM ’14, PhD ’17) is the director of swine health and the National Pork Board. She provides oversight of the board’s Swine Disease Research Taskforce, leading the efforts in biosecurity, traceability and surveillance on behalf of 60,000 U.S. pork producers.
She began her career at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Center for Epidemiology and Animal where she focused on African Swine Fever. Rotolo helped develop the Swine Hemorrhagic Fevers Integrated Surveillance Plan for the USDA to provide for early warning should the disease enter the U.S. swine herd.
Prior to joining the National Pork Board, Rotolo also was a health assurance veterinarian for Pig Improvement Company (PIC) North America, the largest supplier of swine genetics in North America.
In all of these positions, Rotolo has been known for creating and developing new ideas for the swine industry. This began when she was working on her PhD at Iowa State where her research component focused on developing probability of detection estimates for detection of pathogens in oral fluid collected from housed pigs.
Rotolo’s study provided the first piece of the puzzle for oral fluid sampling guidelines which help swine producers and veterinarians design a surveillance program for their herds. She accomplished this by “going outside her comfort zone” as she started studying Geographical Information System.
“I found we could apply these concepts to swine medicine,” she said. “I was able to use my data to prove that spatial autocorrelation exists in disease in swine barns.
“This opened the door for us to start exploring how and where to sample for disease.”
She has continued developing new ideas at the National Pork Board. While managing the Swine Disease Research Task Force, Rotolo focuses on identifying knowledge gaps related to endemic and foreign animal disease.
In this role, she supports several programs and works with several groups.
“Stepping into the role of an ‘industry representative’ has been very rewarding,” Rotolo said. “Having the opportunity to work on behalf of producers and pigs is the dream.”
December 2024