Symposium in honour of Robin Thompson

The Roslin Institute, Easter Bush Campus, EH25 9RG, Edinburgh

General Information

Robin Thompson is a pioneering leader in the fields of statistics, quantitative genetics and animal and plant breeding. He started his career in Edinburgh in the late 1960’s in the then Agricultural Research Council Unit of Statistics, later moving to the Animal Breeding Research Organisation, which ultimately became part of the Roslin Institute. He remained there until the mid 1990’s when he moved to the Institute of Arable Crops Research at Rothamsted as the head of the prestigious department of statistics, established by R.A. Fisher, that laid the foundation for much of modern statistics.

In the 1970’s, while based at the University of Edinburgh, Robin and Desmond Patterson proposed and developed a new statistical method which came to be called REML. It now dominates in several fields including statistics, genetics, breeding, and field trial analysis. Data collected in many real-life settings are inherently unbalanced and REML provides optimized statistical methodology for such data. The foundation paper from 1971, “Recovery of inter-block information when block sizes are unequal” is a citation classic with more than 3,700 citations to date. These days, REML is implemented in most widely used statistical analysis packages.

In addition to inventing REML, Robin has made significant contributions to the development of computationally efficient algorithms to facilitate the application of REML to large datasets. Of these, the most important is the Average Information algorithm, developed in the 1990s. Robin, together with Arthur Gilmour, developed a versatile and efficientsoftware package called ASReml that is the most widely used in animal and plant breeding across the globe today.

Robin has made a broad range of contributions to the development of rigorous science underpinning UK and global animal and plant breeding programmes. His collaborations with the various Edinburgh groups had, and continue to have, particular impact in UK dairy, beef and sheep breeding.

Finally, Robin has made a major input to post-graduate education in Edinburgh. For many years, he taught components of the MSc in Animal Breeding and Quantitative Genetics. He was a formal supervisor of more than twenty research students and an informal mentor of many more. Robin has been incredibly generous with his ideas to both students and established researchers. Several of his former students now have high international reputations.

Meeting organisers:

The Roslin Institute, Gregor Gorjanc, and John Hickey

Contact: Kjerstine Severinsen (kjerstine.severinsen@roslin.ed.ac.uk)

Speakers:

Session 1 – Animal Breeding

• Geoff Simm – Chair

Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Security, University of Edinburgh

• Brian McGuirk – MOET

Independent animal breeding consultant

• Mike Coffey – Genetic evaluations in UK

Animal Breeding & Genomics, Scotland’s Rural College

• Raphael Mrode – Genomic evaluations in small holder systems

Animal Breeding & Genomics, Scotland’s Rural College & International Livestock Research Institute

• John Woolliams – Optimal contributions

The Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh

 

Session 2 – Statistics in breeding

• Esa Mäntysaari – Chair

Animal Genetics, Natural Resources Institute Finland

• Arthur Gilmour – ASREML: A Story about REML

Consultant Biometrician Research Scientist at Cargo Vale Olives

• Ismo Stranden – How REML learned to stop apologising and love Monte Carlo

Animal Genetics, Natural Resources Institute Finland

• Roel Veerkamp – Covariance functions and Random regression

Animal Breeding & Genomics, Wageningen University & Research

• Augustin Blasco – Elliptic selection

Institute for Animal Science and Technology, Polytechnic University of Valencia

 

Session 3 – Plant breeding

• Brian Cullis – Chair

Centre for Bioinformatics and Biometrics, University of Wollongong

• Alison Smith – Robin Thompson’s contribution to the Australian grains industry

Centre for Bioinformatics and Biometrics, University of Wollongong

• Ian White – Some thoughts on ASReml and other matters

School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh

• Fred Van Eeuwijk – Genotype-to-Phenotype Modelling in Plant Breeding

Biometris, Wageningen University & Research

 

Session 4 – Human genetics

• Chris Haley – Chair

MRC Human Genetics & The Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh

• Peter Visscher – From REML to GREML in human complex traits

Program in Complex Trait Genomics Group, University of Queensland

• Naomi Wray – Quantitative Genetics of Disease

Program in Complex Trait Genomics Group, University of Queensland

 

The Thompson Lecture

• William Hill – Chair

School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh

• Robin Thompson – Lecture