Mariana Kikuti awarded $35,000 research grant from Boehringer Ingelheim 

  • Dr. Mariana Kikuti

    Mariana Kikuti awarded $35,000 research grant from Boehringer Ingelheim 

    Dr. Mariana Kikuta poses with a check awarded by the Boehringer Ingelheim Growing Research and New Technology for Swine Grants program at the 2022 Allen D. Leman Swine Conference. Photo courtesy of CVM Swine Group. 

College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) researcher Mariana Kikuti, DVM, MPH, PhD, has been awarded $35,000 from Boehringer Ingelheim for her work on porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS). 

Kikuti received the funding through the Boehringer Ingelheim Growing Research and New Technology for Swine Grants (GRANTS) program for her project, “Characterizing within farm PRRSV evolution and clinical re-breaks with the newly emerged L1C 144 variant in positive unstable breeding herds.”  

Dr. Mariana Kikuti

Kikuti's research interests focus on the epidemiology of emerging and infectious diseases. Her current work involves mainly curating a PRRSV sequence library and using molecular epidemiology approaches to investigate patterns of disease transmission and viral evolution. 

The grant awards were presented at the 2022 Allen D. Leman Swine Conference hosted by CVM for work related to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) and Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae (Mhp).  

Considered instrumental in improving the industry’s understanding of swine diseases, the research projects funded through the GRANTS program improve producers’ success and profitability as they face new challenges in pork production.