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UNE scientist one of the world’s ‘most highly cited’

May 03, 2006

A scientist from The University of New England has joined the ranks of the world’s most highly cited researchers.

Dr Karin Meyer is a Principal Scientist in the Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit (AGBU) at UNE. The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) has added her to its international list of “Highly Cited Researchers”, which spans all scientific disciplines. This distinction recognises the value that Dr Meyer’s colleagues place on her published work.

The ISI Web site, where the list of “Highly Cited Researchers” is published, is: http://hcr3.isiknowledge.com. The fact that it contains the names of fewer than one half of one per cent of all published researchers testifies to Dr Meyer’s achievement. She is only the 95th Australian scientist to be included in the list.

Dr Meyer graduated from Goettingen University in Germany in 1978 and then acquired Master of Science (1979) and Doctor of Philosophy (1983) degrees from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. She has worked at AGBU (a joint unit of UNE and the NSW Department of Primary Industries) for the past 17 years. In 2002 the University of Edinburgh awarded her a highly prestigious Doctor of Science degree.

She is the author of more than 150 journal and conference articles, and a number of software packages that are widely used by colleagues across the world. These packages are designed to estimate genetic parameters that characterise livestock populations. She has made many contributions to the statistical theory that underlies these complex problems. Her high-quality software has helped many other researchers to analyse their data. She continues to make advances in the theory and in the computational efficiency of her progams so that larger data sets can be analysed with more complex statistical models.

Professor Bill Hill, recently retired Dean of Science and Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, said during a recent visit to AGBU: “I am delighted that Karin Meyer's achievements have been recognised, not least because she is a former student whose statistical and programming expertise far exceeds mine. Her contribution to quantitative genetics – particularly of livestock, but also of humans, trees and many other species in nature – has been enormous. Without her programs, much data would have been analysed badly, or not at all. I congratulate her, and am sorry that Armidale's gain was Edinburgh's loss.”

Posted by Jim Scanlan at May 3, 2006 03:01 PM