Andres Legarra, Ph.D.

Andres joined CDCB as Senior Geneticist in January 2023. He works on genetic improvement of livestock with strong emphasis in genetic evaluations with phenotypes, pedigree, and markers; he also enjoys making incursions in pure quantitative genetics. Andres has vast experience in quantitative genetics and animal breeding in Spain, the U.S., and France, where he most recently served as Research Director in Animal Genetics at INRA-Toulouse. Within a large network of collaborators, he actively develops the single-step GBLUP method, which is becoming the standard in genomic prediction. Lately, he has been working in extensions of single-step GBLUP to crosses, dominance, and epistasis.

Andres is also the Senior Editor of the Genetics and Genomics Section of the Journal of Dairy Science. Fluent in three languages, he believes in the great value of international collaborations. He believes that key ingredients to science are rigor, enthusiasm, fun, and usefulness.