Burridge is selected to receive UF Research Foundation professorship

Michael Burridge, a professor of infectious diseases in the department of pathobiology at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, has received a UF Research Foundation professorship.

Sponsored by the university’s Division of Sponsored Research, the professorships have been awarded to 30 tenured faculty members campuswide for distinguished current research. The honor includes a $5,000 salary increase for three years, and a one-time $3,000 award for research support.

A board-certified veterinary epidemiologist, Burridge is respected worldwide for his expertise in the area of tick-borne diseases, particularly heartwater, affecting livestock.

Currently Burridge is involved in heartwater research efforts based in Zimbabwe and at UF. His team has conducted vaccine field trials in Botswana, South Africa and Zambia from their Zimbabwe base.

Burridge also helped develop a tick decoy device that uses pheromones to attract ticks to the pesticide contained in a tag attached to the animal. Burridge and some of his colleagues developed the AppliGator technology, a means of passively treating both wild and domesticated animals with parasiticides to control both internal parasites, such as nematodes, and external ones, such as ticks and flies.

As a result of Burridge’s research efforts, the UF veterinary college has received more than $22 million in 15 years in grant funding from the United States Agency for International Development and other agencies for prevention and control of tick-borne diseases.

“Dr. Burridge leads a preeminent and internationally recognized research program involving ticks and tick borne diseases,” said Joseph A. DiPietro, dean of the UF veterinary college. “The UFRF professorship is a fitting recognition of his long standing research accomplishments.”

Burridge has been a member of UF’s faculty since 1976.