Dr Sonja Dominik

Dr Dominik has two roles with CSIRO. She leads a workpackage in the Trusted Agrifood Export Mission on "Verifying credentials", contributing to the Mission target to increase Australia's food exports by $10b by 2023, by building trust in the safety, quality and provenance of our agrifood. In her other role as Target area lead, she provides high level science leadership and coordination to advance research strategies and impact in sustainability credentials and standards that enable environmental, social, and economic benefits and secure ongoing global market access.
Previously, Dr. Dominik held a number of management roles as acting Research Director for Livestock and Aquaculture, and Group leader Sustainability and Welfare and Genetics and Genomics within the Livestock and Aquaculture Program. Dr. Dominik is an internationally recognised expert in animal breeding and genetics. Her research focuses on developing phenotypically complex novel traits with a passion for understanding the physiological drivers of adaption and their interaction with the environment. Her R&D has delivered improved breeding/selection methodologies across a wide range of complex traits and species (Atlantic salmon, abalone, prawns, oysters, sheep and cattle). In the last 5 years a major focus of her work has been the development of techniques that deliver cost-effective genomic technologies to the commercial sector of the livestock industries and developing traits such as methane emission in sheep, resistance to breech flystrike and immune competence in cattle to maintain the sustainability of the livestock industries.