The founding team
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Thomas graduated as a veterinarian in 2020 and obtained his PhD in Veterinary Sciences in 2024, focusing on practical management of bovine respiratory disease. Thomas works now as a study director designing and leading (non) clinical trials and is further specializing in veterinary pharmaceutical development through the ECVPT-program.
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Prof. Dr. Bart Pardon is affiliated with UGent within the field of internal medicine of large domestic animals and head of the department 'internal diseases' of the ruminant veterinary clinic. Since many years, his research focuses on improving the diagnosis and control of respiratory tract infections in calves. He is the inspirer of qTUS and is responsible for the overall coordination. He sees this project as a unique opportunity to translate years of research into practice on a large scale, and to ensure that new research is immediately applicable.
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Stan is a veterinarian (Ghent University, 2020) with a PhD in bovine internal medicine (2024), specializing in calf health. His research pioneered the on-farm use of quick thoracic ultrasound (qTUS) to diagnose pneumonia in calves, improving practitioners’ skills and enabling field evaluation of treatments and vaccines. He leads a national project on Mycoplasma bovis diagnosis and control, and contributes to European projects on data-driven management of non-EU-regulated animal diseases.
We are pleased to introduce our collaboration with Dr. Francesco Testa and Dr. Stefano Allodi as local qTUS instructors in Italy.
Both are experienced practitioners who successfully completed the qTUS instructor assessment, achieving gold certification and an excellent level of agreement with the founding qTUS trainers (κ > 0.95). Francesco and Stefano deliver high-quality, hands-on qTUS training and certification for practitioners in Northern Italy. the founding qTUS team continues to provide educational standards, certification, updates of training materials, and scientific support.
Local qTUS instructors
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Francesco Testa graduated in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Milan in 1992. He is a bovine practitioner, and since 1999 has been the veterinary contact for the Bergamo APA (Dairy Herd Improvement Association) for bovine milk quality. He is also a technician at ARAL (Lombardy Dairy Herd Improvement Association) and a consultant for NPM Tech in Mantua. He uses Dairy Comp 305 to verify and evaluate herd performance. He has spoken at various conferences and training sessions and has published in national and international journals. He holds a PhD in "Veterinary Hygiene and Animal Pathology" and he is a member of the European Mastitis Panel since 2011. He developed soft skills becoming trainer in Communication with farmers for Preventive Veterinary Consultancy and is certified by qTUS for quick thoracic ultrasound in calves.
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Stefano Allodi graduated from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Bologna in 1998. He works as a freelance veterinarian exclusively in the dairy cattle sector in his home region of Mantova, a small city in Northern Italy. His professional activity focuses primarily on the health and reproductive management of dairy herds that produce milk for Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano cheeses. Over the years, he has developed significant expertise in reproductive management, which has led him to speak at several national and international conferences. From 2017 to 2025, he served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Italian Buiatric Association. For more than five years, he has pursued thoracic ultrasonography in calves with deep and sustained interest.