USDA Seeking Animal Research Geneticist

 

The United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service (USDA ARS) has an exciting opportunity for a Research Geneticist (Animals) in Beltsville, Md., who is passionate about improving dairy animals by increasing accuracy of genomic prediction, evaluating new traits, and redefining selection goals.

Position responsibilities include:

• Conducts basic and applied research to improve productive efficiency, health, fertility, and other traits of economic importance in dairy cattle by evaluating genetic merit and comparing management practices.
• Interrogates single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) for more than 5 million animals, and whole-genome DNA sequence data for thousands of bulls obtained through in-house studies and participation in the 1000 Bull Genomes Project.
• Generates research results for use by all segments of the U.S. dairy industry as well as dairy industries in many other countries.
• Develops methods for more efficient genomic predictions by developing faster algorithms, testing new adjustments and models, accounting for genomic pre-selection, and adding information about new genomic markers.
• Expands genomic data useful for prediction by identifying variants that track the mutations that cause phenotypic differences, such as improved feed efficiency or different rumen microbial profiles.
• Research encompasses genetics, genomics, statistics, biometrics, bioinformatics, and computational strategies used to associate animal phenotypes with their underlying genetic make-up.
• Datasets for research include lactation, fitness, molecular marker, SNP genotypes, whole-genome DNA sequence, and other data from 35 million dairy animals in 20,000 herds enrolled in national milk recording programs.
• Research objectives include, but are not limited to, the enhancement of existing pipelines for selective breeding of dairy animals and the incorporation of new datasets into evaluation systems for improved accuracy of prediction.