Dr. Christian Maltecca (BS and PhD from the University of Milan and PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a Professor of Quantitative Genetics and Breeding and University Faculty Scholar in the Department of Animal Science at North Carolina State University. He is also a member of the Genetics Program, Comparative Medicine Institute, and Bioinformatics Research Center at NC State. His research focus is on genetic improvement and optimizing statistical methods and breeding schemes under genomic selection. With his graduate students, post-docs, and collaborators, he has published 111 journal articles, four books and chapters, 133 other publications, and abstracts, and presented 48 invited talks worldwide. He holds an adjunct appointment at the University of Guelph, and he is part of the graduate school of Animal Science at the University of Padova. He was named a University Faculty Scholar (2015) and received the CSIRO McMaster Fellowship (2020), CALS Outstanding Graduate Teacher Award (2020), the ADSA J.L. Lush Award in Animal Breeding (2020).