Dr. Juliana Mergh Leão (based in Wageningen, The Netherlands) grew up in the largest milk-producer state of Brazil, Minas Gerais, and graduated as a Veterinarian at the Federal University of Minas Gerais- UFMG, Brazil (2011), where she was part of an extension program to improve milk quality and reduce mastitis in dairy herds.
In 2010, started working with dairy calves in the lab of Dr. Sandra Gesteira Coelho (UFMG).
Juliana then earned her MSc (2013) and Ph.D. (2018) in Animal Science from the same institution, focused on neonatal calf nutrition and management. Juliana Spent 1 year of her Ph.D. in Embrapa Gado de Leite -Coronel Pacheco, Brazil, focused on calf feed efficiency, residual feed intake, thermography, and energy expenditure.
After her postgraduate, she moved with her family to The Netherlands and started working for SCCL as a Technical Specialist, assisting different countries and clients specifically on colostrum management and applications of colostrum.
From 2020 on, Juliana is responsible for educating distributors, farmers, vets, and people who are involved with the colostrum management of calves, helping them to raise better calves to become productive cows in the future.
In 2021 started developing small ruminant assistance in The Netherlands, Israel, and Greece. Managed several Small Ruminant projects on new uses and applications of bovine colostrum in different species.
Currently, she is the Technical Manager & RD for SCCL in Europe (UK, The Netherlands, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Italy, Poland, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Israel and Brazil), Juliana is also part of the Research group discussion of the University of Guelph collaborating with Dr Michael Steele and Dr Dave Renaud on the discussion, and planning for future research on colostrum that will be performed by the University of Guelph with the partnership of SCCL.
And, is part of the CODABE Group, the acronym for the platform COnnecting DAiry BEef, which will power synergistic collaborations between research groups and stakeholders to improve the destiny of dairy beef calves and regain the reputation of beef production in European society.