VDPAM Faculty, Staff Recognized with CVM Awards

Dr. Terry Engelken, professor in the Department of Veterinary Diagnostic and Production Animal Medicine, has left a lasting imprint through his exceptional leadership, service and commitment to advancing beef production medicine. His nationally recognized expertise has advanced the health and productivity of Iowa’s beef industry by seamlessly integrating extension and outreach, applied research and professional practice.

Equally impressive is Engelken’s dedication to mentoring future veterinarians. Throughout his career, he has carried one of VDPAM’s heaviest teaching responsibilities including serving as instructor-in-charge for eight courses.

Since joining the College of Veterinary Medicine in 2019, Dr. Rachel Friedrich has made significant contributions to the college through innovative teaching, outstanding clinical service and a commitment to preparing the next generation of food animal veterinarian. She seamlessly integrates patient care with hands-on instruction, transforming every clinical encounter with a meaningful learning experience.

Friedrich provides on-site veterinary care to almost 400 food animal and camelid clients across central Iowa.This past year alone she led 390 farm calls involving 300 student experiences, 9800 animal examinations, and 4800 treatments across eight species. This is in addition to annually directing the Iowa State Fair rotation that oversees the regulatory veterinary services of thousands of exhibition animals.

Dr. Theresa Beachler has established herself as an exceptional clinician, educator and outreach professional accomplishments has far exceeded what is typically expected at this stage of an academic career.

As an assistant professor of theriogenology, Beachler’s professional appointment is heavily focused on clinical service and professional practice She is able to translate cutting-edge reproductive science into practical, applicable information for animal owners and veterinary practitioners.

A faculty member in the Department of Veterinary Diagnostic and Production Animal Medicine, Dr. Chris Siepker was the co-lead in designing and implementing the college’s food animal-focused pathology residency. He takes an active role in each resident’s training, preparing them not only for pathology boards but future employment.

Siepker brings a practical, straight forward teaching style to his courses. As the co-instructor in charge of the 4^th year clinical Diagnostic Laboratory Practicum he has implemented gross rounds for the students, allowing them to highlight a diagnostic case and interact with both VDL and veterinary pathology’s pathologists.

As an associate professor of veterinary diagnostic and production animal medicine. Dr. Mohamed El-Gazzar leads a diverse research program focused on improving and developing infectious bacterial and viral diseases molecular diagnostics and sequence typing assays.

His research program is robust, dynamic and continues to show an upward trend of productivity with 8 peer-reviewed publications in 2024, 10 last year in 2025, and 4 publications already this year. El-Gazzar is dedicated to identifying gaps in our ability to identify  and characterize infectious poultry pathogens.

As the receptionist for the Large Animal Hospital Julie Ellis consistently provides outstanding customer service to clients, referring veterinarians and LVMC faculty and staff. She maintains a calm, polite and professional demeanor even with dealing with stressed and demanding clients and referring veterinarians. Ellis connects with repeat clinics on a personal level building trust by simply addressing them by name.

Outside her normal duties, Ellis also schedules and tracks emergency and in-house duties for students, facilitates equine donations for various equine rotations, and delivers test results to owners.

As a diagnostic associate III in the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory’s Molecular Section, Laura Bradner provides technical support and primary day-to-day staff-level leadership.

Bradner has played a role in either developing, on-boarding or updating nearly all of the VDL’s 175 PCR and gene specific sequencing assays currently offered and conducted. She is a driving force behind the Molecular Section growing to conducting more than 800,000 assays per year and generating more than $22 million in annual service revenue.

Haley Lambert’s dedication to the Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory began as an undergraduate student in the Histopathology Laboratory. Since then, Lambert has continually completed each task in front of her with precision and timeliness, proven to be dependable and reliable as her positive attitude radiates throughout the laboratory.

As a diagnostic associate II, Lambert fulfills both shared responsibilities within the histopathology lab and maintains unique responsibilities including maintaining control inventory, creating usable quality forms and documents, preparing for laboratory audits, assisting with staining and equipment validation and monitoring the digital scanning system.

As a technical project specialist, Dr. Gabrielle Doughan has rapidly distinguished herself through innovative leadership, exceptional scholarship, impactful teaching and a steadfast commitment to advancing the mission of the College of Veterinary Medicine.

What distinguishes Doughan’s work is her ability to identify emerging challenging, develop novel solutions and translate scientific findings into practical applications that benefit students, producers, veterinarians, and the swine industry. Her accomplishments have already established her as a recognized leader in the rapidly evolving field of swine water biosecurity and water line ecology.

A PhD student in veterinary microbiology, Maria Hakimi’s doctoral research focuses on Brachyspira hyodysenteriae, the causative agent of swine dysentery which is a re-emerging disease of major economic and animal health importance worldwide.

Hakimi has also made a groundbreaking contribution through the discovery and characterization of a novel Brachyspira species.  Using a combination of genomic, biochemical and morphological analyses, she demonstrated that this organism represents a previously undescribed species within the genus.

Mostafa Shelkamy’s research work is focused on developing and validating new quantitative real-time PCR assays that can differentiate between non-pathogenic Avibacterium paragallinarum and pathogenic.

Shelkamy is a PhD student in microbiology and is quickly becoming an expert in the field of next generation sequencing, genomic comparisons and bioinformatics as evidenced by his recent selection as the recipient of the Reed Rumsey Award for Advancement in Avian Medicine from the American Association of Avian Pathologists.

Since joining the VDL’s poultry team in 2023, Dr. Eman Gadu has distinguished herself as an exceptionally productive scientist, innovative diagnostician, dedicated mentor and valued collaborator whose contributions have had a substantial impact on poultry health, diagnostic medicine and research excellence.

Gadu has played a pivotal role in advancing the diagnostic capabilities of the VDL. Leveraging her extensive expertise in molecular diagnostics, she has developed and validated more than 20 molecular diagnostic assays, including real-time PCR, sequencing-based assays, and molecular typing tests targeting a wide range of economically important poultry pathogens.