Daniel Gianola

Short CV

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-Champaign. 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).


Selected Awards

  • 2015, Hilldale Award, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • 2015, Accademico Correspondento of the Accademia dei Georgofili (Florence, Italy)
  • 2013, Elected Foreign Member of the Académie d'Agriculture de France
  • 2012, Dr. Sc. Honoris Causa, Iowa State University, USA
  • 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

Research Interests

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.


Selected Publications

  • Gianola, Daniel; Okut, Hayrettin; Weigel, Kent A; Rosa, Guilherme JM: Predicting complex quantitative traits with Bayesian neural networks: a case study with Jersey cows and wheat. BMC Genet 12 (1), 2011, 87.
  • Gianola, D.; de los Campos, G.; Hill, W. G.; Manfredi, E.; Fernando, R.: Additive Genetic Variability and the Bayesian Alphabet. Genetics 183 (1), 2009, 347-363.
  • Gianola, D.: Genomic-Assisted Prediction of Genetic Value With Semiparametric Procedures. Genetics 173 (3), 2006, 1761-1776 .
  • Gianola, D.: Quantitative Genetic Models for Describing Simultaneous and Recursive Relationships Between Phenotypes. Genetics 167 (3), 2004, 1407-1424.
  • Gianola, D.; Perez-Enciso, M.; Toro, M.A.: On marker-assisted prediction of genetic value: beyond the ridge. Genetics 163, 2003, 347-365.
  • Sorensen, Daniel; Gianola, Daniel: Likelihood, Bayesian, and MCMC Methods in Quantitative Genetics. Springer New York, 2002.
  • Sorensen, DA; Wang, CS; Jensen, J; Gianola, D: Bayesian analysis of genetic change due to selection using Gibbs sampling. Genetics Selection Evolution 26 (4), 1994, 333.
  • Wang, CS; Rutledge, JJ; Gianola, D: Marginal inferences about variance components in a mixed linear model using Gibbs sampling. Genetics Selection Evolution 25 (1), 1993, 41.
  • Gianola, Daniel; Fernando, Rohan L.: Bayesian Methods in Animal Breeding Theory. Journal of Animal Science 63 (1), 1986, 217.
  • Gianola, Daniel: Theory and Analysis of Threshold Characters. Journal of Animal Science 54 (5), 1982, 1079.

Publications as TUM-IAS-Fellow

2015

  • Gianola, D.; de los Campos, G.; Toro, M. A.; Naya, H.; Schon, C.-C.; Sorensen, D.: Do Molecular Markers Inform About Pleiotropy? Genetics 201 (1), 2015, 23-29 mehr… BibTeX Volltext ( DOI )
  • Gianola, Daniel; Rosa, Guilherme J.M.: One Hundred Years of Statistical Developments in Animal Breeding. Annual Review of Animal Biosciences 3 (1), 2015, 19-56 mehr… BibTeX Volltext ( DOI )

2014

  • Gianola, Daniel; Weigel, Kent A.; Krämer, Nicole; Stella, Alessandra; Schön, Chris-Carolin: Enhancing Genome-Enabled Prediction by Bagging Genomic BLUP. PLoS ONE 9 (4), 2014, e91693 mehr… BibTeX Volltext ( DOI )

2013

  • Lehermeier, Christina; Wimmer, Valentin; Albrecht, Theresa; Auinger, Hans-Jürgen; Gianola, Daniel; Schmid, Volker J.; Schön, Chris-Carolin: Sensitivity to prior specification in Bayesian genome-based prediction models. Statistical Applications in Genetics and Molecular Biology 12 (3), 2013 mehr… BibTeX Volltext ( DOI )