Cornell University
Moira Sheehan
Cornell PI
Moira Sheehan is the Director of Breeding Insight (BI) at Cornell University. Breeding Insight is the first large-scale public-sector effort to systematically apply genomic information to breeding specialty plants and animals.
The USDA-ARS funds the project and is implementing breeding and genomic data management systems to enhance the capacity of 60 public-sector breeding programs to deliver increased rates of genetic gain. The breeding, genomic, and phenotypic data management systems include databases, analytics, and decision support tools (TTMs) for breeders.
Moira has more than 14 years of experience working with plant breeders to adopt new technologies, methodologies, and data analytics to enhance and hasten their breeding efforts, and 12 years of research experience in many diverse aspects of plant biology and genetics.
Moira is passionate about providing breeders with tools and resources to assist them in making improvements in maintaining food diversity and culturally-important foods, preparing and responding to climate change, improving nutrition and accessibility, and shoring up food-supply chains, starting with public breeders of specialty crops and animals. _________________________________________________________________________________________
Craig Beil
Cornell Co-PI
Craig Beil is the Breeding Program Lead at Breeding Insight (BI) at Cornell University. In his position at BI he leads the science team in integrating statistical analyses from genotypic and phenotypic data to provide breeding-decision support efforts for USDA-ARS specialty crop and livestock breeders.
In concert with the science and software engineering teams, this position works as part of a national initiative to extend the application of genotypic information to routine development of specialty plants and animals. One of the main aims of the science team is to accelerate breeding efforts by integrating the use of phenomics with genomics and natural variation to increase the rate of genetic gain to create healthy, nutritious, and sustainable specialty crops and animals.
Craig has proven expertise in applying genetic principles to enable the interpretation of biological phenomena and provide information that guides strategies and optimizes resources in specialty breeding programs. Craig was trained as a wheat breeder at Colorado State University and has degrees in weed science and agronomy. He worked in industry as a papaya and castor breeder before joining BI. _________________________________________________________________________________________