She is a member of BBSRC Council and a non-executive member of the Animal and Plant Health Agency Board and Chair of the APHA Science Advisory Board. Laura is a veterinary epidemiologist specialising in infectious and non-infectious diseases of livestock. Her most notable research is on footrot, a complex bacterial disease, that causes poor welfare and production losses in sheep. Working with multidisciplinary teams, she has changed understanding of the aetiology and control of footrot and has reduced the prevalence of disease by 50%, preventing 2 million sheep from becoming lame and saving the sheep industry approximately £70 million, each year. Laura was awarded an OBE in 2017 for services to the health and welfare of farmed livestock.