Megan Scholtens
Aquaculture Scientist – Genetics & Data Analysis
Role at Cawthron
Megan is a geneticist within the Aquaculture Group at Cawthron and is involved in a number of research projects across the ‘Shellfish Aquaculture’ and ‘Salmon FCE’ platforms. Megan specialises in the application of genetic and genomic methodologies to enhance the understanding of the genetic basis of variation among individuals in a population. The research spans from understanding how genes affect traits such as growth, development, behavior, reproduction and immunity to improve the efficiency, resilience and survivability of aquatic species. Megan’s role at Cawthron includes developing and running the pipelines for analysing pedigrees and processing genomic data and the calculation of genetic parameters and breeding values to assist with the generation and delivery of commercially relevant genetic gain in fish and shellfish breeding programmes. In addition, Megan contributes to research activities of the Aquaculture team by integrating the experimental biology with commercial production to help provide solutions for clients and deliver tangible outcomes for the aquaculture industry.
Technical skills, experience and interests
- Animal breeding
- Statistical genomics
- Shellfish and agriculture genetic improvement
- Evaluation of production, health and fitness traits in shellfish and finfish
- Programming and writing computational code
- Database management and analysis
Qualifications
- PhD (Animal Science), Massey university, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 2020
- MSc (Animal Science), Massey university, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 2016
- BAgSci (Animal Science), Massey university, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 2015