María Alejandra Blanco is not your usual PhD candidate, but that seems to be the norm rather than the exception when doing research in animal biomechanics and engineering. Blanco is a professor of forage Science at the Universidad Católica Argentina and, along with her husband, owns Grass and Horses, a construction company and consulting firm that installs and maintains equine arenas throughout Latin America. In addition to all of those commitments, she is a current PhD candidate at University of Buenos Aires, co-advised and with a dissertation directed by Mick Peterson, PhD, professor in the University of Kentucky Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering.
Blanco first met Peterson at an Arbeitsgruppe Pferd surfaces training program organized by Arno Lindner, PhD, from Bonn, Germany. Peterson provided two lectures on the relationship of sand physics to equine biomechanics. Working with Peterson had immediate appeal to Blanco because it allowed her to make use of her scientific training and the topics she was currently teaching to some of her students in her business. The business made use of her husband’s construction expertise and her own personal passion for horses.

Blanco’s dissertation considers the effects of different base materials and surface treatments on the performance of the arenas she is building. In order to be realistic, the larger scale and more expensive equipment has been benchmarked during visits to the Lexington-based Racing Surfaces Testing Laboratory.

However, by working with companies in both Germany and England, she has been able to use state-of-the-art materials for her construction and testing work. Two years of test plots in Argentina are now being analyzed and she is working on a timeline for completing work which will inform equestrian surface design in her truly international thesis work.

UK Ag Equine Programs’ staff provided this information.