This year’s winner of the Boehringer Ingelheim Summer Scholar Mentor Award is Dr. G. Andres Contreras, associate professor for the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences. This award, new in 2022 as a pilot for 10 veterinary schools across the country, recognizes exemplary mentorship of veterinary medicine students in the Boehringer Ingelheim Veterinary Scholars Research Program. Specifically, the award honors the importance of mentors and their impact on future veterinarians.

Contreras earned his DVM from Facultad de Medicina Veterinaria y Zootecnia, Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogota, Colombia. From there, he went into dairy practice before he attended the Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine for a dairy internship with the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences. For the internship, Contreras was assigned a project about heifer mastitis, which he says ignited his interest in research as a career path. Contreras stayed in East Lansing and earned two graduate degrees: an MS from the College’s Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences, followed by a PhD from the College’s Comparative Medicine and Integrative Biology Program.

For his MS studies, Contreras focused on milk quality. As he finished that program, he spoke with Dr. Lorraine Sordillo-Gandy, the College’s then Meadow Brook Endowed Chair in Farm Animal Health, about periparturient issues in cow health. Soon enough, Contreras had signed up for a PhD program. He studied how cows mobilize fat when calving, how their immune functions work, and why some cows are more susceptible to disease than others. Contreras continued his research at Wayne State University for two years before returning to MSU, where he’s stayed ever since.

According to Contreras, he wouldn’t be where he is today without the strong mentorship that he’s received. Contreras says his mentors helped him narrow his research focus based on his personal interests and develop the discipline necessary to design and complete those studies.

Today, he works to pass those same tools down to his own mentees. Contreras is especially fond of mentoring DVM students. He says those students are in a unique stage of career development; they’re excited to explore their options, and open to pathways in research. Contreras also sees research experience as a critical component of DVM education so students can properly understand how the veterinary medical field evolved and currently is practiced.

Contreras also acknowledges how he and his own research benefit from his mentee’s involvement. According to Contreras, students’ fresh perspectives ensure he takes nothing for granted, and illustrate the importance of diversity on research teams—not only in characteristics like race and gender, but in diversity of experience, both inside and outside of laboratories. It’s there, he says, that you can see how the realities of someone’s life shape who they are, and use that knowledge to better understand and help them.