Dr. Tessa Wilkin

Tessa Wilkin graduated from the University of Sydney with a bachelor of Animal and Veterinary Bioscience in 2009 with Honours in genetics. Tessa has a background in competitive showjumping and a general love of horses.

Commenced in 2016, Tessa is completing a pHD on the topic “Detecting gene doping in Thoroughbred Racehorses”, a project that is a collaboration between the University of Sydney, the National Measurement Institute and Racing Australia. This project is co—supervised by equine geneticist Dr Natasha Hamilton, and Dr Anna Baoutina, an expert in gene doping detection in human athletes. Dr Baoutina is funded by the Australian Government Anti-doping research program and the World Anti-doping Agency to develop a gene doping test for human athletes, which is being considered as the first gene doping test for implementation in doping control. Tessa’s PhD project is to develop an equine equivalent test suitable for gene doping control in horse racing.