USDA's Agricultural Research Service Honors Scientists of the Year

For his outstanding contributions to veterinary virology and discovery and development of vaccines against African Swine Fever (ASF), Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist Manuel Borca is the agency's Distinguished Senior Research Scientist of the Year for 2022.

Borca, research microbiologist for ARS's Plum Island Animal Disease Control's Foreign Animal Disease Research Unit in Orient Point, New York, is one of many ARS researchers being honored for their scientific achievements.

Borca's research contributed to the vaccine development for diseases that pose threats to U.S. pork industries: Classical Swine Fever and ASF. He conducted research focused on understanding host-viral interactions to inform the development of vaccines specifically designed to control disease outbreaks.