Jörn Bennewitz

After completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in the Group of Prof. Theo Meuwissen in 2008, Jörn Bennewitz became Professor of farm animal genetics and breeding and Head of department at the Institute of Animal Husbandry and Breeding (University of Hohenheim, Germany). His research is focused on the analysis of genetic variability in pig, dairy cattle, sheep and chicken and the exploitation of this variability in breeding programs. Together with his group members, he is working at developing strategies using new technologies for genetic improvement and genomic evaluation of quantitative traits, QTL detection, genomic selection, and genetic diversity.

Andres Legarra

Andres Legarra is a quantitative geneticist in the Animal Genetic Improvement Laboratory at INRA (French National Institute for Agricultural Research) in Toulouse (France). His research interests are focused on the development of mathematical methods for the analysis of genetic variability and management of animal populations based on genomic information and for the implementation of genomic selection. The approaches used include modeling, statistical methods for genome-wide association and linkage disequilibrium-linkage analyses and for the estimation and use of genomic breeding values in farm animals.

Tad S Sonstegard

Tad S Sonstegard is a research geneticist in the Bovine Functional Genomics Laboratory at ARS Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC, USA) where he has initiated genomic approaches for the genetic improvement in dairy cattle. His laboratory is known as one of the first to have implemented next-generation sequencing methods for the development of SNP chips such as the Illumina BovineSNP50 chip and its use in the genomic evaluation program recently established in the US. His research interests continue to focus on the study of ruminant genomes, and the application of genomic tools for accelerated genetic improvement to meet the impending challenges of global food security.

Roger L Vallejo

Roger L Vallejo is a computational biologist and geneticist at the National Center for Cool and Cold Water Aquaculture (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Kearneysville, WV, USA). Roger L Vallejo conducts research on the genetics and genomics of rainbow trout including the application of Bayesian methods to analyze the segregation of complex traits, linkage and association studies for QTL affecting complex traits, the development and implementation of strategies for marker/gene-assisted and genome-enabled selection, the genetic characterization of rainbow trout populations using molecular and pedigree data, transcriptome profiling analysis using microarray and RNA-Seq data.