People

Dr Mathew Cook

Research Director, Livestock & Aquaculture

  • PhD in immunology, and interests in aquatic animal health, including disease processes, immunology, diagnostics and treatment. Passionate about applying cutting edge science to address the challenges in improving Livestock Aquaculture Productivity and Sustainability.

Dr James Kijas

Research Group Leader, Future Breeding

  • James is a molecular geneticist with an international reputation in the field of animal genomics. He joined the Aquaculture program in 2016 to work on Atlantic salmon sex determination and maturation, barramundi applied breeding and genomic tool development. He currently serves as group leader for Breeding and Genomics.

Dr Cedric Simon

Research Group Leader, Nutrition & Production Systems

  • Cedric, Senior Research Scientist, has broad research interests, including the digestive physiology and nutritional requirements of crustaceans, fish and molluscs, the non-invasive assessment of nutritional and health condition using novel tools, feed additives, feed extrusion, and sustainable aquafeed ingredients and formulation. He holds a PhD in Marine Science from the University of Auckland and a BSc in Aquaculture from James Cook University.
  • https://twitter.com/prof_lobster

Dr Sabine Schmoelzl

Research Group Leader, Smart, Sustainable Livestock Systems

  • Dr Sabine Schmoelzl is a Principal Research Scientist and group leader for Sustainability and Welfare with CSIRO Agriculture and Food based in Armidale, leading research in the areas of livestock reproduction and production. The research is focussed on developing novel phenomics approaches to complex industry problems. Research project to improve lamb survival are using on-animal sensor technologies to assess ewe lambing behaviours and metabolic activity, along with pen-side metabolic marker measurements of neonatal lamb metabolic status. Dr Schmoelzl co-leads research to develop novel markers for dark cutting in beef, using proteomics analysis to identify candidates for rapid test technology. Dr Schmoelzl is involved in inter-disciplinary research investigating strategies to increase drought resilience of Australian livestock production. Dr Schmoelzl has conducted research in Germany, Canada, Kenya and Australia.


Dr Aaron Ingham

Senior Principal Research Scientist, Smart, Sustainable Livestock Systems

  • Aaron has a longstanding commitment to research projects that aim to improve animal health and understand the mechanisms of resistance to disease. Aaron’s research has delivered vaccines, immune stimulants, remote monitoring technologies and the immune competence trait.
  • Team contacts


Prof Michelle Colgrave

Deputy Director Impact, Future Protein Lead

  • PhD in bioanalytical mass spectrometry. Michelle uses mass spectrometry (MS) and proteomics to help identify key proteins that will benefit Australia's livestock, aquaculture and plant industries and improve human health. She is leading the Future Protein mission which aims to catalyse Australia’s protein industry growth by delivering high quality, affordable and sustainable protein for the health of Australians and our environment.
  • LinkedIn™ twitter™


Dr Sonja Dominik

Trusted Agrifood Exports

  • Sonja is a quantitative geneticist and has broad knowledge across a range of trait complexes, such as health, reproduction, methane emission and production, and across livestock and aquaculture species. Her group is well networked into the supply chain and sustainability initiatives across CSIRO and externally with international recognition in the group’s science areas.


Dr Toni Reverter-Gomez

Senior Principal Research Scientist, Animal Genomics

  • Toni’s primary research vision is built on capitalising on the post-genomics ‘Big Data’ revolution that is in the process of sweeping the agricultural sciences and looks set to continue. It is vital that both molecular and quantitative scientists continue to develop innovative analytical methods and capabilities in this area. It is already clear that generating genomic, transcriptomic, epigenetic and metabolomics data is becoming more routine and, according to Toni’s believes, fundamental to revolutionising how we may predict and manage animal performance in both health and disease as we collectively look to the future.


Dr Stuart Denman

Team Leader, Northern Cattle Production

  • Stuart is the principal microbial/molecular biologist within the gut microbiology group. His team progresses research to greater understand complex microbial gut systems as they pertain to livestock production and human health. Their research is focused on microbial food safety, enhancing fungal populations, rumen detoxification, methane abatement strategies, improved feed conversion and a better understanding of human gut microbiology.


Dr Caroline Lee

Team Leader, Animal behaviour and welfare

  • Caroline is an animal welfare scientist with an interest in developing novel welfare assessment methods to improve the lives of animals. She is also interested in developing and applying new technologies such as virtual fencing to improve farming systems. She likes to highlight the importance of understanding cognitive and learning abilities to ensure these align with the expectations of applying new technologies and systems to farm animals. She completed her PhD at The University of Sydney in 2001.


Dr Ali Small

Principal Research Scientist

  • Veterinarian, with PhD in veterinary public health (food microbiology). Leads livestock welfare research in a number of areas including pain mitigation for livestock; alternatives to painful husbandry procedures, humane slaughter and neonatal development and survival. Interests also in meat processing, safety, shelf-life and quality.
  • LinkedIn™
    ResearchGate
    twitter™


Dr Laercio Porto-Neto

Team Leader, Animal Genomics

  • PhD Animal Genetics, MSc Animal Reproduction, Degree in Veterinary Medicine. Interested in animal genetics from fundamental research to applied projects. The key concept is to make use of recent advances in genetic technologies to develop research-based solutions for improved efficiency in animal production systems, mainly focused on the tropical environment.


Keren Byrne

  • Keren Byrne is a Research Project Officer in the Molecular Analysis team within CSIRO Agriculture and Food. Keren has a substantive background in functional genomics, gene expression and epigenetics, as well as extensive expertise in proteomics, mass spectrometry (MS) and bioinformatics. Together with her colleagues Keren is using proteomics, and the study of proteins using MS, to identify key proteins of benefit to Australia's plant and livestock industries and improve human health


Dr Hamideh Keshavarzi

Research Plus Postdoctoral Fellow, Animal Behaviour and Welfare

  • Hamideh is an animal welfare scientist with a background of animal breeding and genetics. She conducted her Ph.D. research on abortion incidence in Iranian Holstein dairy cows in 2017. During her Ph.D. and later as a research assistant, she had a chance to visit the university of Copenhagen and develop some mathematic and economic models on reproductive disorders in dairy herds. With Animal Welfare team, her research focuses on study the social interactions and determine association networks in animals. She is particularly interested in understanding how the social friendship helps animals to adapt to a new system.


Gavin Purtell

Business Development Manager

  • A Bachelor of Biotechnology and an MBA enable Gavin to facilitate discussions between science and business domains. Aims to develop positive commercial solutions for all involved. Works collaboratively across CSIRO and with strategic external partners to ensure impactful R&D outcomes are achieved. Enjoys beef and lamb, but all livestock welcomed.
  • LinkedIn™


Rebecca Wright

Research Projects Coordinator

  • Rebecca's background and experience has enabled her to develop a well-rounded set of skills and attributes in supporting CSIRO researchers to deliver on research projects both nationally and internationally. Key skills include; project management/coordination, stakeholder engagement, communications, events planning, office administration, secretariat support and coaching and systems training.


Dr Pamela Alexandre

Post Doctoral fellow

  • Pâmela Alexandre is a postdoctoral fellow at CSIRO Agriculture and Food, based in St. Lucia, Brisbane. Her main project is entitled “The weakest link – using genomics to lift the productivity of Australia’s northern rangeland beef herds” and aims to develop methods to make cutting-edge DNA technologies affordable to commercial beef cattle producers. Pâmela holds a bachelor’s degree in Animal Science from the University of São Paulo (2007-2011) and both MSc (2012-2015) and PhD (2015-2019) in Animal Science from the same institution, with sandwich periods at the University of Copenhagen/Denmark (2014) and CSIRO/Australia (2017/2018). During her Master and PhD, she worked with transcriptomics and system biology analysis to uncover the molecular mechanisms behind feed efficiency in Nellore (Bos indicus) cattle, developing skills that are now applied to a variety of RNA-Seq datasets.


Dr Dana Campbell

Senior Research Scientist

  • PhD in Behavioural Ecology from the University of Auckland with postdoctoral experience in the welfare of mink and laying hens. Currently works with livestock to assess their welfare and uses precision technology to measure behaviour. Strong interest in the impacts of rearing environments, enrichments, affective states, and individual differences.
  • LinkedIn™


Tony Vuocolo

Team Leader

  • Tony Vuocolo leads an AWI and CSIRO funded research project developing a vaccine to protect sheep from flystrike. He has a long history in livestock production and health research in CSIRO with many publications in these areas. Tony is a molecular biologist with extensive expertise in research and development of vaccines against a variety of ectoparasites. His research experience and key skills are in molecular biology, protein chemistry, genomics, epigenomics and immunology.


Dr Jessica Monk

Visiting Scientist

  • Jessica completed her PhD in 2019, studying sheep and cattle behaviour and affective states. She has interests in livestock resilience, affective states and the assessment and benchmarking of animal welfare. Jessica is passionate about research that can facilitate industry-wide improvements in the quality of life of livestock on-farm.


Hannah Salvin

Research Fellow

  • Hannah is a visiting fellow with CSIRO and comes from a diverse research background, including a PhD on dementia in dogs and a stint in human haematology research. Her current research is focused on the development of the welfare benchmarking system and the assessment of behavioural reactivity in livestock.

Jim Lea

Senior Research Technician

  • Jim has worked in large animal research for over 30 years with diverse research experiences across Australia and the South Pacific over a wide range of species. He has extensive animal as well as laboratory expertise and currently assists on and leads technical components of multiple projects within the Animal Behaviour and Welfare Team.

Troy Kalinowski

Research Technician

  • Troy has been around the land all his life working on various properties in the greater Armidale area until becoming a casual technician at CSIRO in 1999. He commenced full time in 2002 where his animal handling and technical expertise sees him assisting on a wide range of livestock projects from cattle to chickens and more.

Dr James Dougherty

Research Scientist

  • James is a modeller who uses his background in comparative nutrition and physiology to model livestock growth and sustainable livestock farming systems. He uses big data approaches to improve decision support tools for livestock producers and to explore how cattle and sheep can be a vital part of circular agriculture and nutrient recycling. He joined CSIRO in 2023 as part of the Impossible Without You program’s Future Protein Mission.