Distinguished Research Professor 2020

Ignacy Misztal, professor of animal and dairy science, is one of the most prominent computational animal breeders in the world, driving commercial and research advances in livestock improvement. His work applies genetic evaluation methodologies and computational strategies to improve livestock production and sustainability.  His goal is to develop genetically superior animals through sophisticated modeling and analytics involving millions of performance records and pedigrees. Misztal invented a widely used, single-step method for genetic evaluation that combines genomic, phenotypic and pedigree information simultaneously. This cost-effective tool is considered the simplest method for large-scale, genomic livestock evaluations and has been adopted internationally by the industry. He also developed one of the industry’s popular software suites for animal breeding, with both research and commercial applications. Misztal’s sponsors use the commercial application, but most of the software is available for free through the cloud and is used in at least 50 countries.