Dr. Paul Bowser, professor of aquatic animal medicine at the College, was presented the Christensen Award for Excellence in Fish Health at the 44th Annual Meeting of the International Association for Aquatic Animal Medicine in late April. The award is given to an individual who has made significant advances in the field of fish health and medicine in the areas of basic and applied research and education. Named after and given in honor of Dr. N. O. Christensen, who served for many years as the Director of Fisheries Medicine at the Royal College of Veterinary Medicine in Denmark, the award has been presented four times since it was established in 1988.

In addition to coordinating the activities of the Aquatic Animal Health Program, Dr. Bowser has served for 25 years as the associate director of the AQUAVET program, a joint educational program in aquatic veterinary medicine that is sponsored by Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining Cornell in 1985, Dr. Bowser held faculty positions at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State University and at the Bodega Marine Laboratory of the University of California-Davis.

Dr. Bowser’s research has focused on parasitic, bacterial, and viral diseases of fish; tumor biology in fish; evaluation of new therapeutic compounds in fish; and emerging diseases of fish. Most recently, his laboratory group has been heavily involved with studies of the emergence of Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia that has been found in a wide diversity of fish species in the Great Lakes Basin.