Professor Aila Vanhatalo leads research and teaching in the field of ruminant nutrition at the Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki.  She has specialised in ruminant nutrition physiology. Emphasis in her research activities has been in protein and lipid metabolism studies in dairy cows consuming grass or red clover silage based diets.
Infusion studies include metabolic and production responses of cows to abomasal infusions of amino acids and other nutrients in order to identify limiting amino acids or other nutrients on high forage diets. Her present research activities focus on nutrient supply (especially amino acids and fatty acids) and metabolism in dairy cows, but also on the impact of dairy cow nutrition on milk components (e.g. fatty acids and phyto-oestrogens) with potential health-promoting effects in humans. 

Publications:

• Shingfield, K., Ahvenjärvi, S., Toivonen, V., Vanhatalo, A., Huhtanen, P. 2007. Transfer of absorbed cis-9, trans-11 conjugated linoleic acid into milk is biologically more efficient than endogenous synthesis from absorbed vaccenic acid in lactating cows  The Journal of Nutrition 137, 5: 1154-1160.
• Vanhatalo, A., Kuoppala, K., Toivonen, V., Shingfield , K. J. 2007. Effects of forage species and stage of maturity on bovine milk fatty acid composition. European Journal of Lipid Science and Technology 109, 8: 856-867.
• Vanhatalo, A., Gäddnäs, T., Heikkilä, T. 2006. Microbial protein synthesis, digestion and lactation reponses of cows to grass or grass-red clover silage supplemented with barley or oats. Agricultural and Food Science 15:252-267.