Breeding Programme Modelling with AlphaSimR

Gregor Gorjanc

Group leader at The Roslin Institute

University of Edinburgh

I am a Group leader (Reader) at The Roslin Institute of The University of Edinburgh. I have an engineering degree in Animal Science (2003) and PhD in Genetics (2010) from The University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. After completing my PhD, I took a teaching position at The University of Ljubljana. I moved to The Roslin Institute in 2013.

I am managing and improving populations using data science, genetics and breeding and I am delivering this work in collaboration with members of the HighlanderLab. The work involves:

(i) development of methods for genetics and breeding

(ii) design and optimisation of breeding programs, and

(iii) analysis of phenotypic and genetic data to unravel biology and to inform new ways of improving populations.

My speciality is in working across different domains (data science, genetics, and breeding) and across different agricultural populations (animals, plants, and insects).

Ivan Pocrnic

Core Scientist (Research Fellow)

University of Edinburgh

I am a core scientist at The Roslin Institute, where my main research interest is in the development of novel breeding methodologies and tools. This work involves a synergy between theoretical quantitative genetics and practical animal breeding.

Before taking my current post at The Roslin Institute in 2019, I was a postdoc with Ignacy Misztal at the University of Georgia (USA) where I also obtained a PhD in Animal Breeding and Genetics (2017). Previously, I gained practical experience by working at the Croatian department for breeding value estimation. I have an MSc in Animal Breeding and Genetics (2012) and a BSc in Agricultural Economics (2009) from the University of Zagreb (Croatia).

My main area of expertise is in the application of genomic selection on big datasets for various animal species (pig, chicken, cattle, etc.) and various models, with emphasis on single-step genomic prediction.

Steph Smith

Teaching Fellow

University of Edinburgh

I am a Teaching Fellow at the Global Academy of Agriculture and Food systems. I am also the Agritech Talent Co-ordinator for the DDI Agritech hub.

As part of my Teaching Fellow role I work on undergraduate and postgraduate course development opportunities. As part of my DDI role I help facilitate and deliver educational activities within the field of Agri-tech.

My background is in population genetics, molecular ecology and evolutionary biology. Despite studying wild systems during my PhD, I spent over 5 years as a post-doc working on a domesticated species (the dairy cow) at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC). I am particularly interested in the application of genetic approaches to tackle issues in conservation biology and sustainable living. I also try to participate in science communication when I can as I believes it is very important to communicate research to the public and wider audiences and share the exciting aspects of science.

Laura Strachan

PhD student

University of Edinburgh

I’m a PhD student at The Roslin Institute, part of the HighlanderLab and supervised by Gregor. I’m currently working on extending the AlphaSimR simulator to accommodate honeybee biology. With this I aim to explore different breeding strategies for honeybees and analyse the use of genomic data in honeybees.

Gabriela M. Fortuna

PhD student

University of Edinburgh

I am a PhD student at the HighlanderLab, supervised by Gregor. My work aims to optimise breeding strategy for crossbreeding taurine-indicine dairy cattle in Brazil. I got my veterinarian degree at Universidade Federal Fluminense in Brazil and my MSc in Animal Breeding from the EMABG programme.

During my MSc I studied at the University of Göttingen in Germany and at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. During that period I intensively used AlphaSimR to simulate the inclusion of mtDNA variation into breeding value estimations for dairy cattle and different breeding strategies to investigate its impact on accuracy of estimations and genetic gain over time.