Profile

For 28 years, Dr. María de Lourdes Alonso Spilsbury served as a Full-Time Professor and researcher in the Ecological Development of Animal Production Area within the Department of Agricultural and Animal Production at the Xochimilco Campus of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM). In this role, she was honored seven times for her outstanding contribution to research. She also led the Consolidated Academic Body: "Animal Welfare Evaluation in the Environmental Context."

Born in Mexico City in 1961, Dr. María De Lourdes Alonso Spilsbury is a distinguished Veterinary Surgeon, having graduated from UAM, Xochimilco Campus, in 1985. In 1989, she earned a specialization in Pig Production from the Open University System at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Zootechnics at UNAM. She continued her studies at the University of Minnesota, where she earned a PhD in 1994, conducting her research in applied ethology at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Skara.

Dr. Alonso Spilsbury has supplemented her education with five diplomas in areas such as Environmental Studies (UAM, 1997), Wildlife Reproduction and Management (UAM, 2000), Medicine, Surgery, and Zootechnics of Dogs and Cats (FMVZ-UNAM, 2003), and Bioethics (UAM, 2012 and College of Bioethics, 2013). Throughout her career, she has attended 85 professional development courses and 175 scientific-academic events, establishing herself as an authority in her field. She is a Certified Veterinary Surgeon by CONCERVET in Pig Medicine and Zootechnics, as well as in Applied Ethology and Animal Welfare. Since 2008, she has been a member of the Animal Welfare Committee of CONASA.

Her academic and research work includes co-authoring 36 books, 67 book chapters, and 12 manuals on pig management, production, reproduction, and pathology, as well as the behavior of captive wildlife. She has also published 94 technical dissemination articles in national journals and has supervised 46 undergraduate theses and 20 postgraduate theses. As a researcher, she has co-authored 93 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals and is a member of the National System of Researchers.

One of her most significant contributions to research was the discovery, along with her doctoral student, Dr. Daniel Mota, that the doses of oxytocin used in prepartum sows led to high rates of stillbirths, which changed the protocols for its use in Mexico and internationally.

In the editorial field, she served on the editorial board of Elsevier for the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science from 2008 to 2011, and has been a guest reviewer on numerous occasions for various specialized journals. She has also collaborated as a reviewer of research projects for CONACyT.

In the professional field, she is co-founder and former president of the Mexican Society of Veterinary Ethology and Animal Welfare (SOMEBA) and has been an active member of the Mexican Association of Pig Veterinary Specialists (AMVEC) for 32 years, receiving multiple awards for her work and career, including the "Sus scrofa" and the "Golden Boar" awards. Since 2012, she has been a member of the Mexican Veterinary Academy.