Olivier Hanotte joined the ILRI LiveGene team in Addis Ababa

Welcome to Professor Olivier Hanotte who recently joined the ILRI LiveGene team in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Olivier is not really a newcomer. He worked at ILRI-Nairobi from July, 1995 to December, 2008 supervising a team of scientists at ILRI- Kenya, ILRI – Ethiopia and at the joint ILRI-CAAS laboratory China. In January 2009, Olivier left us for a 6 years ‘academic break’ and join University of Nottingham as Professor of Population and Conservation Genetics leading a research team aiming to unravel at genome level the genetic control of functional tropical livestock diversity for its use in breeding improvement programs. Until December 2010, he was also the Director of ‘’The Frozen Ark’’, http://www.frozenark.org/, a charity and a consortium of museums, zoos, aquaria and research institutes across the world with the mission to collect and save tissues and DNA from animals facing extinction. Olivier has now joined ILRI as Principal Scientist on full time secondment from the University of Nottingham. His main responsibilities are to provide scientific supports to LiveGene bilateral genetics and genomics projects, in particular to the Bill and Melinda Gates funded African Chicken Genetic Gain (ACGG) program. He is also leading the Animal Genetic flagship of the new, in the shaping, livestock CRP. Asked why he rejoined ILRI, he responded, “When I joined ILRI in 1995 it was a land of opportunities for a young scientist, it remains the best move of my scientific career. Today, thanks to genomics, we may expect to see in the short-term improvement of productivity at small-holders levels, it will be short sight to miss these opportunities and the truth is that ILRI is the best place to make these things happen”.