CGIL Seminar – Adaptive breeding of performance cattle breeds

Good morning CGIL,   

This week we are happy to have Dr. Tad Stonstegard, the Chief Executive Officer at Acceligen, presenting for us on Friday, December 13th, 2024. The seminar will begin at 1:30 PM EDT/EST on the virtual platform Microsoft Teams. The presentation title is: “Adaptive breeding of performance cattle breeds”.  

Speaker Bio: Dr. Tad Sonstegard serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Acceligen, overseeing the commercialization of their groundbreaking genetic improvement breeding platform for food animals that combines genomics, gene editing, and advanced cell culture and reproductive methods. Under Dr. Sonstegard’s leadership, Acceligen has moved from making proof-of-concept animals to achieving the first commercial use approvals in multiple countries with their innovative product lines for heat tolerant beef and dairy cattle. Currently, Acceligen’s focus is to develop climate-smart food animals, with additional flagship products for disease-tolerant cattle designed to reduce methane emissions and improve revenues for tropical farm operations. Prior to his role at Acceligen, Dr. Sonstegard directed a distinguished livestock molecular genetics research program at the USDA in Beltsville, MD. His team pioneered the first commercial agricultural-based SNP tool in 2007, enabling genomic selection in cattle breeding. Recognized with multiple tech transfer awards, this work transformed genetic improvement for progressive animal breeders and genetic companies. His academic journey began at Iowa State University for his undergraduate degree, followed by a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota after leaving his family’s Red Angus cattle operation in West Central Minnesota. 

Information to attend: To join this seminar, please ensure you have downloaded the Microsoft Teams application to your computer or join the meeting online using the web browser version of Microsoft Teams. Please join the meeting with your microphone on mute and the camera turned off. After the presentation, you can unmute the microphone, and optionally turn on the camera, if you wish to ask a question. Alternatively, if you wish to pose your question in the chat function, the presenter will answer questions made through the chat.  

Teams link to attend: 

https://teams.microsoft.com/dl/launcher/launcher.html?url=%2F_%23%2Fl%2Fmeetup-join%2F19%3Ameeting_MjVjYTUxNjItNTI5My00ZDQ5LTg3NTItZjM2NDA1N2FkY2E5%40thread.v2%2F0%3Fcontext%3D%257b%2522Tid%2522%253a%2522be62a12b-2cad-49a1-a5fa-85f4f3156a7d%2522%252c%2522Oid%2522%253a%2522522551ba-0e93-4d61-8464-d782a9e7306d%2522%257d%26anon%3Dtrue&type=meetup-join&deeplinkId=2b2872c3-7e39-404f-a111-061e1b79823e&directDl=true&msLaunch=true&enableMobilePage=true&suppressPrompt=true  

*Recordings of previous CGIL seminars are available at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAQ_5WCTMRQ6Gs35yROqGIQ/featured   

Looking forward to seeing everyone there!   

Gabby Condello and Ella Dodd.