Roy Costilla
Applied Geneticist
Role at Cawthron
Roy Costilla is a statistician and applied geneticist within the Aquaculture group. He is an experienced scientist and works with a range of livestock and aquaculture species.
Roy is involved in several research and commercial projects, including the Climate Adapted Finfish and Shellfish Aquaculture Programmes, where he applies his expertise to support innovation in New Zealand’s aquaculture industry.
Roy’s work focuses on the following outcomes:
- supporting the breeding programs of commercial aquaculture partners in New Zealand
- optimization of computational pipelines for genetic evaluations in salmon and New Zealand greenshell mussels
- delivering training in genomics and computational methods for research and industry partners in New Zealand and abroad
- international consultancy, for example, genomic evaluations in smallholder systems and breeders in developing countries.
Technical skills, experience and interests
- estimation of genetic parameters, breeding values and molecular markers associated with several production traits in cattle, sheep and deer, buffalo, alpacas and aquaculture species
- development of genetic evaluations for novel traits in livestock and aquaculture
- implementing new methods for genomic evaluations with large datasets in high-performance computing environments.
Qualifications
-
PhD (Statistics), Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand, 2017
-
MA (Economics), Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA, 2008
-
BA (Economics), Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Perú, 2003.
Professional Affiliations
- International Society of Animal Genetics
- New Zealand Statistical Association
- Association for the Advancement of Animal Breeding and Genetics