Scientific depth. Leadership that moves work forward.

Dr. Megan C. Niederwerder brings executive leadership, scientific depth, and national animal-health program experience to Aster. As Executive Director of the Swine Health Information Center (SHIC), she led the organization to achieve its highest research investment in a single year. In 2025, the Center reviewed 116 proposals requesting $17.7 million and contracted 32 research projects totaling $4.4 million, its highest annual proposal volume and greatest total research investment since its founding. Under Megan’s leadership, SHIC provided more than 60 producer-facing articles in 2025 alone, translating disease developments and research findings into practical industry information.

After joining SHIC as Associate Director in 2022 and becoming Executive Director in 2024, she directed strategy and daily operations, emerging disease preparedness, global disease monitoring, research investments, and coordinated communications. Her responsibilities included reporting to a nine-member Board of Directors, oversight of $7–$9 million in assets, and coordination of two working groups comprised of 57 animal-health experts. She helped build collaborative partnerships to leverage funding and scientific networks, including the $4 million H5N1 Risk to Swine program with FFAR and the Pork Checkoff. From 2022 through 2025, Megan led the Center in securing over $5 million in matching funds and external grants.

Before her executive leadership at SHIC, Megan served as an academic faculty member, principal investigator, and directed an internationally recognized research laboratory focused on swine viral diseases. She led research teams of up to 20 scientists in conducting in vitro and in vivo studies involving ASFV, PRRSV, PRRSV/PCV2 co-infection, CSFV, PRV, and PEDV. Her work involved more than 1,840 nursery pigs and examined disease pathogenesis, mitigation of production impacts, and feed as a pathway for virus introduction and transmission. Her team developed and validated ASFV feed-testing protocols. Her work included analysis of more than 2,035 feed samples inoculated with ASFV, CSFV, or PRV, building distinctive expertise in BSL-2 and BSL-3 swine virology.

Her academic tenure also included mentoring graduate and veterinary student researchers as well as coordinating and teaching veterinary virology to approximately 119 students per semester. Internationally recognized for her swine-health expertise, she has represented the U.S. pork industry as a member of the U.S. Delegation to the World Organisation for Animal Health from 2023 - 2026. Megan connects research with practice by translating complex findings into accessible communications for producers, veterinarians, and industry leaders, identifying practical applications and clearly explaining the limits of the evidence.

At Aster, Megan leads engagements directly, applying this experience across strategy, competitive research funding, program oversight, disease preparedness, and scientific communication. Her leadership extends from framing a research question and aligning partners to managing subcontracts, interpreting results, and delivering findings that stakeholders can use through a variety of communication tools.