Maria Devant, Dr

Researcher
IRTA, Ruminant Production

Maria Devant, PhD in Animal Science, Ruminant Production Researcher at IRTA.
I have a solid background in R&D in Swine and Ruminant Production. Over the last 15 years, I have focused my scientific career in beef production improving feed efficiency and enhancing economic returns while minimizing environmental impact, improving animal welfare, and offering high-quality products to the consumers through research and innovation. To achieve this goal the creation and leadership of the Beef Innovation Table has been crucial, in this annual meeting 12 representatives of the whole production chain propose and set priorities of the research topics, and in this forum we also connect them the new societal demands that are coming and that they need to be prepared (like antibiotic user reduction). My expertise is nutrition, management and welfare, and in case a topic needs the expertise in another area we find collaboration within IRTA or outside IRTA to solve it. In the last 5 years I have focused my research in 2 topics: strategies to improve calf vitality and modulation of behavior and stress through nutrition (gut-brain axis). As a result of this work, I have published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles in major international journals (Quartile 1). These publications have a total of 1547citations yielding an H-index of 21. Along with this research activity I am head of the Ruminant Production Program (since 2016) and Nutrition Program (since April 2021) and member of the Strategic and Scientific Committee at IRTA (since 2019), in these 3 positions where team science needs to be successful, two skills like i) openness to different perspectives and being able to conceptualize the big picture, ii) and being able to uniting people around a common mission are needed.