Colin Lynch Position/Title: Ph.D. student email: clynch@uoguelph.ca Phone: Office: ANNU 043 LinkedIn

I am a Ph.D. student in the Centre for Genetic Improvement of Livestock under the advisement of Dr. Christine Baes and Dr. Flavio Schenkel. Originally, I am from Dublin, Ireland where I completed my undergraduate degree in Agricultural Science, majoring in Animal Science, from University College Dublin (UCD). My interest in Animal Breeding and Genetics stemmed from my time at UCD and influenced my decision to travel abroad to gain international experience and further develop my knowledge and understanding of the dairy cattle sector. I arrived in Canada in September of 2018 to complete my Master’s and in September of 2020 successfully defended my thesis which looked at the effect of synchronized breeding on genetic evaluations of fertility traits in dairy cattle. I subsequently began my Ph.D. in the fall semester of 2020.

Currently, I’m involved in the Resilient Dairy Genome Project, where along with Emma Hyland, Renee Bongers, Nienke van Staaveren and Hinayah Rojas de Oliveira, we aim to improve the accuracy of genetic selection for various health traits and to broaden disease resistance by adding new phenotypes of calf health traits to the portfolio of genetic evaluations within Canada. To accomplish this, we intend to develop standardized protocols for recording calf health events in herd management software, to create a data pipeline for calf health traits for use in genetic evaluations, and to calculate phenotypic and genetic correlations to other economically important traits.

In my free time, I keep myself active playing rugby and participating on multiple intramural teams within the university.