CGIL Seminar F2020- Dr. Christian Maltecca
Date and Time
Location
Online via Microsoft Teams
Details
We are very pleased to have Dr. Christian Maltecca, a Professor of Quantitative Genetics and Breeding at North Carolina State University, presenting a CGIL Seminar on Friday December 11th, 2020. The seminar will begin at 1:30 PM EDT/EST on the virtual platform Microsoft Teams. The title of the presentation is: “Dos and Don'ts of using microbiome information to predict swine performance”.
To join this seminar, please ensure you have downloaded the Microsoft Teams application to your computer, or join the meeting online by using the web browser version of Microsoft Teams. Please join the meeting with your microphone on mute and camera turned off. After the presentation, you can unmute the microphone, and optionally turn on the camera, if you wish to ask a question. Alternatively, should you wish to pose your question in the chat function, it will be monitored and asked to the presenter.
Connection information for the meeting has been sent via a Calendar invitation, additionally the meeting can be found at the link below.
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/
Speaker Biography:
Christian Maltecca, Professor of quantitative genetics and breeding in the animal science department, is the recipient of the 2020 J. L. Lush Award in Animal Breeding, given in recognition of his contributions to the advancement of dairy cattle breeding. Christian Maltecca was born in Milan, Italy. Maltecca earned his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Universita’ Degli Studi di Milano in Italy in 2000 and 2005 and a second Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2008. Along with his position at the Animal Science department, Maltecca is part of the genetics and bioinformatics programs, as well as the comparative medicine institute, at North Carolina State University. Additionally, he is an adjunct professor at the University of Guelph and an adjunct member of the Ph.D. School of Animal Science of the University of Padova. His main areas of interest are the genetic improvement of functional traits as well as optimizing methods and breeding scheme designs under genomic selection. Maltecca is among the most active and prolific geneticists in his field and maintains active connections with the global livestock industry either through his own initiative or through collaborations with other institutions. Maltecca has published more than 100 refereed papers in scientific journals; about 30% of these papers were published in the Journal of Dairy Science. He has also published four between books and book chapters and more than 200 technical articles and abstracts. Maltecca is a highly sought after international partner, collaborating in several projects with some the most productive and relevant research group in the world. The overall focus of Maltecca’s research is the integration of a wide array of genomic technologies in selection programs. His work spans different species, including dairy and beef cattle, as well as swine. Maltecca developed and refined methodologies for genomic selection with Bayesian non-linear models. More recently he has investigated the application of these methods to disease resistance, functionality and health traits in dairy cattle and results from one of his graduate students’ thesis in collaboration with the USDA AGIL group have provided the foundation for the implementation of genomic selection for disease resistance traits for US dairy cattle.
One of his current areas of research revolves around the use of genomic information to manage diversity and minimize the unfavorable effects of inbreeding in livestock, an area that, with the widespread adoption of genomics is playing an increasingly important role in breeding programs. For his research work, Dr. Maltecca has received the Faculty Scholar Award by NCSU. In his 12 years tenure at NCSU, Maltecca supervised ten visiting students from five countries and three postdoctoral fellows. Maltecca has successfully advised to completion 7 Ph.D. students, and 2 MSc students. For his contribution to graduate student mentoring, Maltecca received the CALS Outstanding Graduate Instructor award in 2020. In recognition of his remarkable contributions to dairy cattle breeding and genomics, Dr. Maltecca is a very deserving recipient for the J. L. Lush Award in Animal Breeding