Faculty

Trish Berger's research interests include fertilization and fertility; gamete membrane interaction at the molecular level, including species comparisons and species variation; effect of environmental stresses; Sertoli cell proliferation and testicular development. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology

Richard Blatchford's research interests include husbandry, behavior, and welfare of small to large scale poultry operations; effects of housing design and management techniques on laying hens and broilers; development of on-farm assessment tools. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Avian Sciences

Hao Cheng's research interests include development of statistical methods, computational algorithms and software tools for quantitative and statistical genetics. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Integrative Genetics and Genomics

I am a geographer and interdisciplinary social scientist focused on climate change, agriculture, and the environment. My research draws on and engages political ecology, geographical political economy and economic geography, science and technology studies, applied ethics, critical policy studies, cultural economy, environmental sociology, and animal studies.

Anna Denicol's research interests include reproductive and developmental biology. Paracrine and endocrine regulation of ovarian follicle and oocyte development and carry over effects of adverse environments during folliculogenesis on embryonic development. Biology of embryonic stem cells and in vitro gametogenesis.

Ed DePeters' research interests include ruminant nutrition of dairy cattle; mammary gland synthesis of milk protein and fat; nutrient digestion, absorption, and metabolism; evaluation of by-product feedstuffs and forage quality. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Nutritional Biology

Jackson Gross' research is focused into three distinct, yet overlapping applied research themes; (1) Aquaculture, (2) Invasion Biology and (3) Environmental/Ecological Toxicology. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Ecology.

Timothy Hackmann's research interests include improving nutrition of ruminants through study of the microbes of the rumen; increasing supply of microbial protein available to animal digestion; discovering biochemical pathways that microbes use to ferment carbohydrates in feed.

Matthias Hess' research interests include the application of cultivation- independent and cultivation- based approaches to obtain a multi- scale (from molecule to cell to population to ecosystem) understanding of microbial systems. Study how microbial systems respond to environmental changes and affect their habitats. Identification of microbes and microbial proteins of industrial and medical relevance. Elucidating the biology of anaerobic fungi and their role during anaerobic digestion of biomass. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Biological Systems Engineering; Microbiology

Kristina Horback's research interests include investigating the ontogeny and heritability of species-specific personality traits among domestic farm animals; evaluating the relationship between personality traits and an individual’s ability to cope with environmental and/or social stress (i.e., biological health and psychological state). Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Animal Behavior

Russ Hovey's research interests include hormonal regulation of mammary gland growth, lactation, and breast cancer with interests in ovarian and pituitary hormone functions; role of the stromal environment in cell function; and across- species differences in milk production, mammary gland biology, hormone function and breast cancer risk. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Integrative Genetics and Genomics; International Agricultural Development; Nutritional Biology

Elisha Hull's research interests included conservation ecology; population genetics; phylogeography; threatened and endangered species; migration ecology; raptor biology. Graduate Groups: Avian Sciences; Ecology

Ermias Kebreab's research interests include sustainable animal agriculture; energy and nutrient requirement/utilization of farm animals; environmental impact of animal agriculture including modeling greenhouse gas emissions from livestock; tropical animal agriculture. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Ecology; International Agriculture and Development

Annie King's research interests include natural antioxidants, prevention of lipid oxidation in poultry meat and its products, use of fruit and vegetable by-products as poultry feed ingredients; determination of cholesterol oxides. Graduate Groups: Agricultural and Food Chemistry; Food Science

Dietmar Kueltz' research interests include aquatic biology, evolutionary physiology and genomics, fish osmoregulation, environmental stress response, global environmental change, comparative proteomics; Identification and characterization of key molecular mechanisms conferring environmental stress resistance and why these mechanisms are effective in some animals and cell types while weak in others. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Genetics; Ecology; Molecular, Cellular and Integrative Physiology

Yanhong Liu's research interests include evaluation of feed ingredients and additives as potential alternatives to antibiotics for use in the animal agricultural industry; address public concerns about antimicrobial resistance and help the animal industry deploy feed-based health technologies to improve animal health. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Nutritional Biology

Elizabeth Maga's research interests include applied genetic engineering and gene editing; development and use of animal models of disease, translation of the use of genetically engineered ruminant milk to improve animal and human health, health and well- being of transgenic animals, role of intestinal microbiota on health and resistance to infection; relationship between casein genotypes and goat milk quality. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Food Science

Maja Makagon's research interests include animal behavior, animal welfare, poultry housing and management. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Animal Behavior; Avian Sciences

Amy McLean's research interests include improving equine management, behavior and welfare with a specific interest in donkeys, mules, hinnies and working equids in developing countries. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology

Deanne Meyer's research interests include analyses of production, collection, storage, transportation, and utilization of nutrients and water on dairies. Extension activities focus on environmental stewardship education of policy makers and other stakeholders. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology

Michael Mienaltowski's research interests include physiology; musculoskeletal biology; development, maturation, and repair; extracellular matrix/niche organization; tissue engineering; stem/progenitor cell biology; functional genomics; mouse model; equine; poultry; livestock. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology, Integrative Genetics and Genomics, Integrative Pathobiology

Michael Miller's research interests include animal genetics and genomics; conservation and ecological genetics and genomics; genomics and bioinformatics technology development; salmonid fishes. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Ecology; Integrative Genetics and Genomics

Frank Mitloehner's research interests include sustainable livestock agriculture, with primary focus on livestock’s contribution to air quality impairment and climate change and related mitigation. Furthermore, he studies the implications of air emissions on the health/welfare and safety of workers and livestock. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Animal Behavior; Ecology; Agricultural Chemistry

Carly Moody's research interests include a combination of applied ethology and epidemiology research methods and statistical techniques to study animal welfare. She has conducted research in a variety of areas including low-stress handling, agonistic interactions in socially housed animals, mitigating procedural pain and stress, and studying human-animal interactions. She conducts research with a range of animal species including companion, farmed, and laboratory animals.

Kelly Nichols’ research interests include digestive and metabolic flexibility of dairy cattle to elevate understanding of dietary protein and energy interactions, mammary gland metabolism, and postabsorptive nutrient utilization to improve the transfer of dietary nutrients into milk.

Anita Oberbauer's research interests include cell and molecular control of animal growth; investigation of the genetic causes of traits especially disease in cattle and dogs. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Integrative Genetics and Genomics; Molecular, Cellular and Integrative Physiology; Forensics

L. Allen Pettey's research interests include effectiveness of teaching methodologies and technologies as they apply to animal science courses; pedagogically sound approaches to curriculum and course development for traditional and non- traditional animal science students; applied livestock nutrition focusing on use of alternative feed ingredients. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology

Pablo Ross' research interests include the application of assisted reproductive technologies in animal production systems, epigenetic mechanisms controlling early embryonic development and pluripotency, functional genomics of preimplantation development using next generation sequencing, embryo genetic engineering and blastocyst complementation, embryonic stem cell (ESC) biology and induction of pluripotency by defined factors (iPSC), and functional annotation of animal genomes (FAANG). Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Integrative Genetics and Genomics

Andrea Schreier's research interests include applying genetic and genomic techniques to answer ecological or evolutionary questions about wild populations, conservation of threatened and endangered species, genetic management of conservation and commercial aquaculture, animal polyploidy. Graduate Groups: Ecology; Integrative Genetics and Genomics

Kathryn Teixeira's research interests include evaluation of informal teacher mentoring and in-service in school-based agricultural education, inclusion of students with special needs in school-based agricultural education, and teachers’ use of social media as a means for increased social capital in agricultural education.

Anne Todgham's research interests include stress physiology with an interest in understanding the molecular, biochemical and physiological mechanisms that underlie an animal’s capacity to cope with environmental change. Todgham studies vulnerability to multiple stressors in the context of conservation of aquatic species and managing stress in sustainable aquaculture. Graduate Groups: Animal Behavior; Animal Biology; Ecology

Cassandra Tucker's research interests include animal welfare, animal behavior, effects of housing design and environmental conditions on dairy and beef cattle. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Animal Behavior

Payam Vahmani's research interests include enhancing the nutritional and health value of animal-sourced foods for human consumption, developing nutritional and management strategies to enhance the level of bioactive nutrients in animal-sourced foods, examining health effects of functional/nutritionally enhanced animal-sourced foods using cell culture, animal models and clinical trials, and studying how animal-sourced foods foster human health (i.e. prevent chronic diseases and nutrient deficiencies), and their role in food security.

Alison Van Eenennaam's research interests include the use of biotechnologies in animal agriculture, marker-assisted selection in cattle, cloned and transgenic or genetically engineered animals, gene editing in animals, science communication. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Integrative Genetics and Genomics

Jason Watters' research interests include animal behavior, animal welfare, conservation behavior, behavioral assays of animal welfare, environmental enrichment for zoo and aquarium animals, and zoo animal behavior and its impact on zoo-goers.

Xiang Yang's research interests include meat safety, meat quality, shelf life of meat and meat products, postharvest foodborne pathogen control, characterizing pathogen and whole microbial community profiles present in meat production chain, effect of feeding system on degree of antimicrobial resistance and pathogen prevalence in livestock and poultry. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Food Science

Huaijun Zhou's research interests include molecular and cellular mechanisms of host- pathogen interaction and disease resistance using genetic, epigenomic and bioinformatic approaches in poultry and the functional annotation of animal genomes by integrating ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq, Methyl-seq and RNA-seq etc. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology; Avian Sciences; Integrative Genetics and Genomics; Immunology; Microbiology

Richard Zinn's research interests include nutrition, health, and management of feedlot cattle. Graduate Groups: Animal Biology