Prof. Pfeiffer (Chair Professor of One Health) has recently delivered an invited presentation at Hokkaido University’s Program for Leading Graduate Schools in Sapporo, Japan, as part of the 22nd Leading Seminar series under their programme entitled “Fostering Global Leaders in Veterinary Science toward Contributing to One Health”.

During the morning, Professor Pfeiffer was introduced to the wide range of research activities that the veterinary school is involved in. In the afternoon, he spoke about his personal career experience from becoming a veterinarian and then a scientist and veterinary epidemiologist to a large audience of graduate students and staff. This was followed by a talk entitled “The One Health Approach - A Holistic Perspective for an Ever More Complex Future”. In his presentation, Prof Pfeiffer stressed that the challenges in our ever more connected and more complex world require for future generations of scientists to acquire the skills for conducting truly interdisciplinary research. This means that they should aim for excellence in their own scientific discipline, much as has always been the case. However, in contrast to the past, we have come to realise that it is essential that they are also trained to contribute much more effectively to interdisciplinary research activities. And in that context, the real difficulty is not so much the ability to conduct integrated research between various scientific disciplines within the natural sciences, such as between those within the human and animal health domains, but rather between disciplines from the natural and those from social sciences.