Matthew Price

Matthew is a quantitative geneticist at NZAEL (New Zealand Animal Evaluation Limited), a subsidiary of DairyNZ. His primary focus is on analysing and developing the genetic models which underpin breeding indexes.

This involves working on the models to improve them or account for problems in the data that might be introducing a bias, querying data inputs and outputs, and considering new traits for inclusion.

“Novel traits are being proposed all the time and we carry out heritability studies to investigate them,” says Matthew. “Like the first project I was involved in which looked at hoof health. We want to know, ‘Is this trait heritable? How much is heritable? And is it something we could potentially breed for?’”.

Matthew has also created a programming app used to regularly to check for variability and anomalies in monthly model results. “I like thinking outside the box and using mathematics to come up with solutions to tackle problems,” says Matthew. “Mathematics can be a bit abstract, but here we are using it to achieve practical outcomes. It doesn't matter what the project is, I always find myself thinking, ‘Is there a better way we could do this?”.

Matthew gained his Bachelor of Science, in mathematics and biology, at the University of Canterbury. His Master of Science, in animal breeding and genetics, was completed through the European Masters in Animal Breeding and Genetics (EMABG) programme and partially funded by a DairyNZ scholarship. He spent the first year of his studies at Wageningen University, Netherlands, and second year at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.