They tackle some big challenges and exciting opportunities in agriculture, and work hard to improve farmers’ lives.
We’re always on the lookout for more talent. So, if you’re skilled in reproductive technology, quantitative genetics, statistics or machine learning join us.
Meet some of our research scientists.
Education
PhD in Animal Breeding and Statistics, Iowa State University USA.
Masters of Agricultural Science (First Class Hons.) in Animal Breeding, Massey University.
Bachelor of Agricultural Science, Massey University.
About Bevin
Bevin's interests lie in developing and implementing statistical methods for integrating genomic information into large scale genetic evaluation systems.
He helps provide software tools that maximise the benefits from our breeding scheme and for specialised mating plans for customers. Bevin also undertakes analysis of data for our gene discovery program.
Actively involved in leading a small group that is using advanced analytical and learning models to interrogate and interpret data from the on-farm automated data capture of animals and the environment.
Education
PhD in Animal Science, Massey University.
Masters of Agricultural Science, Massey University.
Bachelor of Agricultural Science, China Agricultural University.
About Zhenzhong
Zhenzhong leads research in male and female reproduction. He oversees areas such as artificial insemination, semen production and processing, and cow fertility on farm.
Education
Bachelor of Animal Science (Hons), major in Animal Genetics and Improvement, Massey University
About Rachel
Rachel manages the Herd Improvement Team. This Team is responsible for ensuring the outputs of LIC’s genomic evaluation system is accessible and available for farmers and the dairy industry, and provides education and insights to promote genetic gain on farm.
Rachel is currently the Product Owner for the development of LIC’s internal Herd by Herd system, into a digital environment.
Education
PhD in Science, University of Nottingham (Animal Physiology).
Masters of Science, University of Nottingham.
Bachelor of Science, University of Nottingham.
About Steve
Steve’s research background is in dairy science. He is currently carrying out research into the development of heat tolerant dairy cattle and also the development of facial eczema-related diagnostics.
Education
PhD in Animal Breeding, University of British Columbia, Canada.
Masters of Science in Animal Breeding, University of Guelph, Canada.
Bachelor of Science in Agriculture (Hons,) University of Guelph, Canada.
About Anne
Anne is a quantitative geneticist and animal breeder who’s carried out research in milk colour, gestation length and calving difficulty. She’s currently developing models for genomic selection.
Education
PhD in Biochemistry, Stockholm University, Sweden.
Masters of Science in Biology, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China.
Bachelor of Science in Biology, Lanzhou University, China.
About Danhui
Danhui is a senior scientist in the semen team. Her main focus is to better understand the biochemical and physiological changes in sperm cells during in-vitro storage at ambient temperature.
Education
PhD in Reproductive Physiology, Massey University.
Bachelor of Applied Science (First Class Hons) in Animal Science, Massey University.
About Lorna
Lorna started with the Research and Development group in 2003, after completing a PhD in dairy cattle reproduction. Her passion is undertaking research that can make a direct impact on-farm, ideally including escaping the office to do field work. She also enjoys supervising postgraduate students and seeing them enter careers in the industry. Lorna’s areas of research and interest areas include:
- Genetic variation in methane production
- New phenotypes (traits) for genetic selection
- Heifer live weight targets & the impact of reaching targets on reproduction and milk production
- OAD milking
- Female reproduction
Education
PhD in Biological Sciences, University of Auckland
Masters of Science in Bioinformatics, University of Auckland.
Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Bioinformatics, University of Auckland.
About Thomas
Thomas’ research is based around understanding the genetics that control cattle traits such as growth and milk production. This research is centred around the use of RNA-seq technology to understand gene expression in the mammary gland. More recently, he has also begun investigating the use of techniques such as ChIP-seq and ATAC-seq to highlight regions of the genome that are significant for the cattle traits mentioned above. The ultimate goal of this research is to identify genetic variants that can be used to improve the accuracy of genomic predictions of animal performance.
Education
PhD in Bioinformatics and Genetics, Massey.
Graduate Diploma in Secondary teaching, Waikato.
Bachelor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences (Hons), Waikato.
About Kathryn
Kathryn has been involved in a broad range of research including semen allocation, and analysis of milk composition, fertility and mastitis traits.
More recently, she has been involved in establishing associations between animal traits and genomic information. For her PhD, she looked at how we can improve genomic prediction of new and existing traits in NZ dairy cattle using fine milk composition data.
Education
PhD in Biochemistry, University of Otago.
Postgraduate Diploma in Science (Cellular and Molecular Biology), University of Canterbury.
Bachelor of Science (Biology), University of Waikato.
About Matt
Matt is involved in the development and utilisation of very large-scale bovine DNA and RNA sequence datasets to attempt to discover variants impacting a variety of bovine traits.
He splits his time between LIC and Massey University, where Matt holds a professorship at the AL Rae Centre in Ruakura, Hamilton.
Matt supervises a number of graduate students as part of these academic activities, and also currently leads an externally-funded MBIE Endeavour research programme as part of a collaboration between LIC, the University of Auckland, Massey University, and NZAEL.
Education
Bachelor of Agricultural Science (Hons), Massey University.
About Ric
Ric is involved in the ongoing development of our genomic selection programme and its integration into the breeding scheme. He also manages our genomic resource and is interested in managing and maintaining diversity in the population.
Education
Master of Animal Sciences, major in Animal Breeding and Genetics, Wageningen University and Research Centre.
Bachelor of Animal Sciences, Wageningen University and Research Centre.
About
Esther works in the quantitative genetics team and provides technical support to both our International as well as our Livestock Selection team.
Education
BSc (Hons) Biochemistry
PhD in Human Genetic Disease, Imperial College, London University
About Rosemary
Rosemary trained in molecular biology and microbiology. Her key interest is in identifying or developing diagnostic tests relevant to NZ dairy animals and working with her team to find inventive and practical solutions to support the high though-put testing in the Animal Health Laboratory.
Education
PhD in Animal Genomics at University of Liege, Belgium.
Masters of Science (Biochemistry), University of Canterbury.
Bachelor of Science (Biochemistry), University of Canterbury.
About Chad
Chad works at the intersection of genetics and computing with massive genomic datasets. His research is in the application of genomic technologies at a population scale. With key areas being de novo, familial and rare functional variants and the impact of the microbiome on animal health and welfare. He is also involved in the development of infrastructure capable of dealing with population scale genomic datasets.
Education
PhD - Machine Learning, titled Random Relational Rules, University of Waikato.
Master of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, University of Waikato.
Bachelor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, University of Waikato.
About Grant
Grant works in the Analytics group, and has recently been working on LIC’s satellite pasture measurement product, SPACE™.
Education
PhD in Molecular Reproductive Biology, University of Cambridge (UK).
Bachelor of Science (Hons), Lincoln University.
About Christine
Christine trained as a molecular biologist and is currently involved in characterising large genomic variants and sex chromosome genetics.
Education
PhD in Animal Breeding and Genetics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
About Mohammad
Mohammad started in the Research and Development group in 2018.
Mohammad’s areas of interest include the designing and application of statistical models in genetic evaluations, mainly focused on simultaneous incorporation of genomic, pedigree and performance data in genomic evaluation of the dairy cattle population.
Education
PhD in Computational Chemistry, University of Canterbury
Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and in Philosophy, University of Canterbury
Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Computer Science, University of Canterbury
About Andrew
Andrew joined the team in 2019. He utilizes the NeSI supercomputing facilities to analyse whole-genome-sequence data of cattle and of microorganisms relating to dairy cow health.
Education
PhD in Biophysics and Imaging at University Montpellier, France
Biomathematics, bioinformatics, and computational biology Engineering at INSA Lyon, France
About Hieu
Hieu is part of the Analytics group and work on broad range of projects involving Artificial Intelligence in general and Computer Vision specifically.
Education
PhD in Microbiology & Immunology, University of Otago
Bachelor of Science (First Class Hons), University of Otago
About Megan
Megan works in the Animal Health group and is involved in the development and assessment of diagnostic tests for infection, disease exposure and health status for dairy animals.
Education
PhD in Computational Climate Change Science from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena, Germany
Diploma in Biology from the University Jena, Germany
About Martina
Martina works on the processing of whole genome sequence data from cows and microbes. Process automation and efficiency improvement are the current key focus areas.
