The Department is delighted to send its congratulations to Dr Erasmus zu Ermgassen whose PhD thesis ‘Strategies for sustainable livestock production in Brazil and the European Community' has won this year's Thomas Henry Huxley Award and Marsh Prize, given jointly by the Zoological Society of London and the Marsh Christian Trust. This award recognises a postgraduate research student whose thesis has made a significant contribution to a particular scientific field. Nominees are considered from a University of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, on the basis of original work, which has been awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the academic year in which the Award is presented.

His supervisor, Professor Andrew Balmford writes "A vet by training, Erasmus is interested in ways of limiting the substantial environmental impacts of livestock production. As a student, he stood out in part by being highly productive, but more significantly through his ability to spot important yet tractable questions and then tackle them through an exceptionally diverse mix of carefully-applied methods from a broad suite of disciplines. Besides ecology, his thesis combined state-of-the-art methods from engineering, social science and economics. He focused on two particular issues with considerable real-world potential for footprint reduction."

Of his PhD thesis, Professor Balmford continued to say that it was "among the most original and careful in the field, and his work on potential changes to EU pig production is likely in due course, I believe, to underpin major reforms to the sector."  Erasmus blogged about this work here: https://theconversation.com/ban-on-food-waste-as-animal-feed-should-be-reconsidered-heres-why-95480

Erasmus is now a Post-doctoral Fellow at UCLouvain and you can read about his current work on his website: https://erasmuszu.weebly.com/projects.html.