IMGC Newsletter Editorial Staff

Associate Editors

Johan van Arendonk

Johan obtained his Ph.D. degree at Wageningen University in 1985. After graduation he joined the animal breeding and genetics group of Wageningen University. In 1988 he spent six months at the University of Guelph (Canada) and in 1992 he spent another six-month sabbatical at the University of New England (Armidale, Australia). He obtained a personal chair in 1999 and in 2001 was appointed head of the animal breeding and genomics centres of Wageningen University. He has lead the Dutch Milk Genomics initiative since 2004. Johan's present areas of research are: the use of molecular information for the detection and utilization of genes affecting traits, quantitative genetics and optimization of breeding programmes. He has (co-) authored close to 200 papers in scientific journals and supervised 38 Ph.D. students.

 

Daniela Barile

Daniela Barile received her degrees in the area of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Food Science from the Piemonte Orientale University (Italy). She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Food Science Department at University of California, Davis, and the Associate Director of International Programs at the Foods for Health Institute.  Her research interests include the biological properties of milk bioactive components (glycoproteins and oligosaccharides) in relation to intestinal endogenous microflora. Using advanced mass spectrometric instruments Dr. Barile identified valuable prebiotic carbohydrates (oligosaccharides) in whey permeate, a by-product of whey utilization and also in other dairy products. She is also in charge of the collaborations between UCDavis and a research center in Ireland (Teagasc-Moorepark) and in Italy (Piemonte Orientale University). Previous positions have been with the National Italian Association of Milk Producers and the Drugs and Food Biotechnology Center (Novara, Italy) where she was in charge of defining parameters for food safety and food authenticity using Multivariate Statistical Analysis.

 

Katie Hinde

Katie Hinde received her B.A. magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Washington in 1999. She earned her MA (2004) and Ph.D. (2008) in Anthropology at UCLA. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the the Human Evolutionary Biology department at Harvard University. Dr. Hinde’s research seeks to understand how mother’s milk contributes to physiological, psychobiological, and behavioral development in infants of socially complex taxa, particularly humans and non-human primates. Mother’s milk and the consequences for infant outcomes have been repeatedly identified as fundamental for understanding numerous aspects of developmental nutrition, parent-offspring conflict, and life history theory but until her work, relatively little was known about inter-individual variation in milk synthesis. Research from her Comparative Lactation Laboratory established descriptive values for rhesus macaque milk production, and demonstrated the influence of maternal life-history and infant sex on milk composition and yield. Her ongoing work shows that energetic and hormonal aspects of milk, particular cortisol, not only influence infant growth but also contribute to infant behavior. Higher calories and more cortisol in milk contributes to producing infants that are more active, playful, and exploratory, and are better at coping in novel, stressful situations.

 

Ross Tellam

Ross Tellam recieved his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Queensland. He began his research career as a post-doctoral research associate at Washington University School of Medicine in 1979.  Dr Tellam is currently a Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO Livestock Industries in Brisbane, Australia where he leads a number of projects on the genetics and epigenetics of dairy cattle. He has been a key leader in several large and multi-disiplinary research projects and was a co-leader  of the international Bovine Genome Sequencing Consortium. His research interests include the bovine genome sequence and comparative mammalian genomics, lactation and mastitis, skeletal muscle development in mammals,  genetics and livestock production traits, epigenetics in mammalian development and inflammatory responses, and control of gene expression.