Dr Raphael Mrode holds a joint position as Professor of Quantitative Genetics and genomics at the Scotland Rural College (SRUC), United Kingdom and Principal Scientist in Quantitative Dairy Cattle genetics at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Kenya. He obtained his PhD from Edinburgh University on Animal Genetics and Breeding as a Commonwealth Scholar. He has been involved in the development and research underpinning genetic and genomic evaluations in dairy and beef cattle, goats and sheep in the UK over 30 years and in the development of innovative genomic approaches to livestock genetic improvement in low-input environments at ILRI.
He is a member of Technical committee of INTERBULL, the organization in charge of international dairy cattle evaluations, an auditor for the International Committee for Animal Recording (ICAR) and research consultant supporting the FAO/IAEA coordinated research project on the Application of Nuclear and Genomic Tools. He has been lecturing on the Edinburgh University MSc course on Quantitative Genetics and Genome (QGG) since 2005, a co-teacher at the international course on QGG at ILRI-BeCA and principal instructor at similar courses in South Korea, Romania, Turkey, Nigeria and Kenya. He is the author of the text, ‘Linear models for the Prediction of Breeding Values, now in its third edition, co-author of 2 other textbooks, author of 2 book chapters and have over 55 peer-reviewed papers. He has been a member of the Editorial Board, American Journal of Animal Science and he is the Assistant Section Editor on Animal genetics for the journal, Animal.