Veterinarians have long been the keepers of animal health and indirect supporters of human health, treating and caring for pets and maintaining the health of livestock. However, a less popular career path for veterinarians also is a very exciting one: scientific research.

Though we often picture scientists bent over a laboratory bench pouring bright liquids into shiny flasks, today’s research scientist can look any number of ways. They can be scientists in a lab studying things like chemical interactions or DNA. They can be someone in scrubs performing exams and diagnostics on animals to gain information about diseases and treatments. They even can be out in the field exploring ecosystems and disease transmission. What’s exciting for me is that as a veterinarian, I can fulfill roles in any of these types of settings.

Given the comparative nature of our training, veterinarians make excellent translational researchers because of our strength in extrapolating data from one species to another. As such, vets play an integral role in disease research. We study disease mechanisms, how diseases transmit and spread across populations and between species, and we fervently work toward developing new treatments. We often look at these factors in animals, sometimes rodents, but also in other species and patients. This allows us to gain knowledge relevant to our veterinary patients, as well as provide deeper understandings of diseases in people and work toward developing treatments for all, people and animals alike. 

Veterinarians also have a uniquely fine-tuned expertise in animal care, assessment of comfort, pain management, health, and wellbeing. Veterinarians play a role that cannot be replaced by any other profession in this regard. We are necessary for optimal studies and serve this role as laboratory animal veterinarians or research scientists with interests in the welfare of our animals.

 Vets in the field also are imperative to a broad range of research topics. Field veterinary researchers may study endangered species to help us better prevent the extinction of our precious fauna. Field vets may study ecosystems and how different factors affect those ecosystems to help us preserve them under the increasing pressures of modern society. Veterinary researchers also work in the field in the increasingly important and growing fight against zoonoses, diseases that spread from animals to people. As society continues to encroach on animal habitats, monitoring and learning about zoonoses and developing treatments against them will become ever more integral to our survival and healthy interactions with other species.

 Veterinarians can serve a wide variety of roles in our modern society. They are the keepers of animal health, ranging from our pets to our food supply. They are the sentinels of conservation, researching ecosystems, species distributions, and health to enact positive environmental changes. They are the scientists at the bench-top next to the cage, or in the field making discoveries that will impact the health of all species as animals and people continue to share share ecosystems and diseases.