Professor honoured with RHASS Special Medal
2024 is the first time that this Special Medal has been awarded for excellence and contribution to the science, in the field of animal genetics
Professor Mike Coffey, Head of Animal Breeding & Genomics at SRUC, has been awarded the RHASS (Royal Highland & Agricultural Society of Scotland) Special Medal for his excellence and contribution to science in the field of animal genetics.
RHASS has supported the advancement of Scottish Agriculture and Innovation for the last 240 years and has, for the first time, awarded its Special Medal for outstanding contributions to science in the field of animal genetics.
Prof Coffey’s main areas of research interest lie in the genetic and genomic improvement of farmed livestock for traits valuable to the animal, the farmer and society. This started with dairy cattle but has expanded to include beef, sheep, goats, and pigs.
Recent socio-economic developments and their resulting price spikes have sharply focused everyone’s attention on efficiency traits and environmental impact. Recently, Prof Coffey’s group have begun exploring the use of Deep Learning to predict new phenotypes from milk mid-infrared (MIR) spectral data. Successes so far include predicting pregnancy status and bTB status. They are expanding the list of traits of interest to include Johnes disease, BVD and contaminants in milk. They also extract new phenotypes automatically from sheep CT scans and goat and cow udder images.
The RHASS Special Medal will be the latest addition to Prof Coffey’s collection of awards. In 2020 he won the Princess Royal Award, given annually to a person who has made an outstanding lifetime contribution to the dairy sector. In 2022 he won the Innovation in Farming Award for the FastBreeders project, which optimises genomic selection decisions in grazing crossbred dairy cows. Prof Coffey has also received international recognition for his work and has received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, aiming to improve livestock productivity and efficiency in both the UK and Africa.
James Logan, RHASS Chairman said, “We are delighted to award the RHASS Special Medal to Professor Mike Coffey. His work has had a profoundly positive impact on the dairy industry. He has been at the forefront of dairy cow breeding for almost 40 years and continues to do so. His work is invaluable in helping our farmers produce cows that are productive, profitable and healthy.
“It is an honour to present him with the RHASS Special Medal to recognise the incredible impact his work has had on agriculture worldwide.”
Prof Coffey said, “It is a great honour and privilege to be recognised by RHASS for doing my job which produces great personal satisfaction in itself. It is especially so when the award is a special award. I have had the privilege of working in dairy cattle breeding for nearly 40 years and more recently improvements have been very great in the UK dairy industry and so it is very satisfying to have been recognised for playing a small part in that process.”
Professor Wayne Powell, Principal and Chief Executive of SRUC, said: “We are extremely proud of Mike and the work his team have done in the hugely important field of livestock genetics. The Special Medal from RHASS is fitting recognition of the enormous contribution that Mike has made – and continues to make – to the farming sector, both in Scotland and around the world.”
Posted by SRUC on 24/07/2024
