CQUniversity Associate Professor Ross Shepherd recently gave an invited presentation at the 2010 Queensland Workshop on Frontiers in Statistical Genetics and Genomics.

The workshop was organised by the QUT Collaborative Centre for Data Analysis, Modelling and Computation and was held at the QUT Kelvin Grove campus. Over 75 scientists attended the one-day event.

Associate Professor Ross Shepherd (left) with other participants at the Frontiers in Statistical Genetics and Genomics workshop

Other speakers at the workshop included Professor Elizabeth Thompson (University of Washington, Seattle), Professor Kaye Basford (University of Queensland), Professor Dr Peter Visscher (Queensland Institute of Medical Research), Professor Mike Goddard (University of Melbourne) and Professor Kerrie Mengerson (Queensland University of Technology).

The title of Ross' talk was A fast EM algorithm for genomic selection and complex trait prediction and presented recent results of Ross' research into statistical genomics.

This research was initiated during an OSPRO in 2008 at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh.

Collaborative research has continued with Professor Peter Visscher who heads the Statistical Genetics Laboratory at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research.

Ross was recently given an appointment as a visiting scientist at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research.

Aspects of this research were recently published in the journal BMC Bioinformatics and were also presented at the 9^th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production held in Leipzig, Germany from August 1 to 6, 2010.