Technische Universität München

Professor Gianola obtained his Ing. Agr. Degree in Agriculture and Animal Production from the Universidad de la Republica in Uruguay, and his MSc and PhD in Animal Breeding and Statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Between 1971 and 1975 he held research assistant positions at Cornell University (Animal Science) and at the University of Wisconsin (Medical Genetics). After a few years with the World Bank, he eventually became a full professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaing. Currently he holds a Sewall Wright professorship in the department of Animal Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, with joint appointments in the Dairy Science and Biostatistics and Medical Informatics departments, where he has been in the faculty since 1991. He has held a considerable number of visiting professorships in prestigious universities all over the world, and has developed consulting activities for several research institutions, as well as for international organizations (e.g., the World Bank and USAID).

2012 Dr. Sc. Honoris Causa, Iowa State University, USA (to be granted May 2012)

2010 Dr. Sc. Honoris Causa, Universidad de la Republica, Montevideo, Uruguay

2010 Dr. Sc. Honoris Causa, University of Aarhus, Denmark

2009 Dr. Sc. Honoris Causa, George August University Gottingen, Federal Republic of Germany

2007 Alexander Von Humboldt Senior Research Award, Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, Bonn, Germany

10 representative publications:

D. Sorensen and D. Gianola. 2002. Likelihood, Bayesian and MCMC methods in quantitative genetics. 740 pp. Springer, New York.

D. Gianola. 1982. Theory and analysis of threshold characters. Journal of Animal Science 54: 1079-1096.

D. Gianola and R. L. Fernando. 1986. Bayesian methods in animal breeding theory. J. Anim. Sci. 63: 217-244.

C.S. Wang, J.J. Rutledge and D. Gianola. 1993. Marginal inferences about variance components in a mixed linear model using Gibbs sampling. Genetics, Selection, Evolution 25: 41-62.

D. Sorensen, C.S. Wang, J. Jensen and D. Gianola. 1994. Bayesian analysis of genetic change due to selection using Gibbs sampling. Genetics, Selection, Evolution 26: 333-360.

D. Gianola, M. Perez-Enciso and M. A. Toro. 2003. On marker-assisted prediction of genetic value: beyond the ridge. Genetics 163: 347-365

D. Gianola and D. Sorensen. 2004. Quantitative genetic models for describing simultaneous and recursive relationships between phenotypes. Genetics 167: 1407-1424.

D. Gianola, R. L. Fernando and A. Stella. 2006. Genomic assisted prediction of genetic value with semi-parametric procedures. Genetics 173, 1761-1776.

D. Gianola, G. de los Campos, W. G. Hill, E. Manfredi and R. L. Fernando. 2009. Additive genetic variability and the Bayesian alphabet. Genetics 187, 347-363.

D. Gianola, H. Okut, K. A. Weigel and G. J. M. Rosa. 2011. Predicting complex quantitative traits with Bayesian neural networks: a case study with Jersey cows and wheat, BMC Genetics 12, 87 (doi:10.1186/1471-2156-12-87)

Prof. Daniel Gianola works as a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow at TUM-IAS with the Schoen group to develop new methods for predicting complex traits in plant and animal breeding and in human or veterinary medicine using genomic information and statistical learning techniques. The goal is to develop methodology that accounts for the highly-dimensional nature of genomic information as well as genome complexity, from the perspective of genetic improvement of agricultural species, as well as personalized prediction of treatment outcomes in medicine.