Hafiz Muhammad Safwan

Hafiz Muhammad Safwan is a veterinarian and researcher specializing in canine infectious disease, vaccine development, and molecular diagnostics. He is currently a final-year PhD candidate in Animal Medicine and Health at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain, where his doctoral research, supervised by Prof. Laia Solano-Gallego, focuses on advancing vaccine development as a preventive tool against Leishmania infantum infection in dogs. He completed his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) and Master of Philosophy (MPhil) in Veterinary Surgery at the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS), Lahore, before being awarded the HEC Pakistan Overseas PhD Scholarship to pursue doctoral studies in Spain. His PhD work integrates clinical vaccine trials, molecular diagnostics, and immunology, spanning a randomized, blinded, multicenter vaccine trial in dogs, a study comparing hair and blood qPCR for Leishmania detection, and the optimization of an IFN-γ whole blood assay for assessing cellular immunity. His first-author study on non-invasive molecular diagnostics was published in Parasites & Vectors (2026), and he has authored several other peer-reviewed publications spanning veterinary surgery, parasitology, and pharmacology. Hafiz is an active member of the international research community, participating in multiple COST Action networks across Europe, including training schools in Germany, Poland, Italy, and Croatia, and the EU-LI-PHE (European Network on Livestock Phenomics). Working groups on infectious disease phenomics and epidemiology. He has presented his research at international veterinary conferences, including the Animal Leishmaniosis International Veterinary Event (ALIVE-2) in Nice, France. As he completes his PhD, Hafiz is working toward a research career bridging veterinary molecular diagnostics with population-level infectious disease epidemiology and One Health approaches, with the aim of contributing to disease control efforts both internationally and in Pakistan.