Rachel Hawken, PhD

Senior Director of Genetics
Cobb-Vantress Inc.

My name is Rachel Hawen, I am the senior director for genetics (genomnics and quantitative genetics) at Cobb-Vantress.
I currently lead a talented team of scientists and support staff at Cobb-Vantress (a broiler breeding company) to develop tools to achieve and maintain a competitive product in the chicken breeding industry. My team and I explore genomic and quantitate genetic approaches, engage innovate technologies and collaborative research to achieve this goal.
I received my Ph.D. in The University of Melbourne, School of Veterinary Science and completed my Post doc at the University of Minnesota. I then joined a team at CSIRO's LIvestock Industries in Australia. During my career I have spent many years developing genomic tools (SNP chips and genomic database tools) to enable the selection of superior breeding stock for livestock breeding programs . I have now had the privilege of working with the dairy, beef and now the chicken industries to implement these tools to select for superior breeding stock. In the chicken industry I have also designed and implemented logistic and sampling systems needed to engage genomic selection programs.