- 2014 Wolf Prize in Agriculture
Intro
Leif Andersson is a Swedish animal geneticist and professor of functional genomics at Uppsala University. In 2014, he won the Wolf Prize in Agriculture with Jorge Dubcovsky for their breakthrough contribution to the study of plants and animals, through the use of cutting-edge genomic technologies
Education and Work Experience
1984, Ph.D. in Animal Breeding and Genetics, SLU, Uppsala
1986, Research leader of Department of Animal Breeding and Genetics, SLU, Uppsala
2006-Present, Professor of Functional Genomics, Uppsala University
2016-Present, Professor of Animal Genomics, Texas A&M University
Honors and Awards
2002, Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
2012, Foreign Associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences
2014, Wolf Prize in Agriculture
2019, Foreign Member of Chinese Academy of Engineering
Major Academic Achievements
Prof. Andersson has led the path in the development of genomic and marker assisted selection as a means to identify superior breeding stock; these advances in livestock selection have replace the more classical phenotypic selection methods and are an essential contribution to sustainable feeding of a growing world population. He is considered to be the world’s leading authority on the evolutionary genetics/genomics of animal domestication and particularly that of the domestic fowl. He was amongst the very first to use RFLP-technology to analyze genetic variation in livestock at the DNA level and to study its impact on economically important livestock traits and has been a forefront leader of animal genetics. One of the central themes of his research has been to