MCMC methods for sampling posterior distributions

If there is no mathematical formula for the posterior distribution it can often be approximated by sampling from it. This is possible in Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods which sample one or more parameters conditional on the data and all the current values of other parameters.

Bio

Professor Mike Goddard has a joint appointment between Agriculture Victoria and University of Melbourne as Professorial Fellow in Animal Genetics. His research is in the genetics of quantitative or complex traits in livestock and in humans. In 2001, he published, with others, the first paper describing genomic selection which uses DNA polymorphisms to estimate the genetic merit of individuals. This method is now widely used in livestock and crops.

Bio

Ruidong Xiang obtained his PhD in animal genetics at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. His research focuses on understanding the mechanisms via which genetics shape phenotype in agricultural species. Currently, he works as a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, on how to use multi-trait and multi-omics data to improve genomic selection of cattle complex traits. He works closely with scientists from Agriculture Victoria to integrate biological and functional information into breeding programs to more accurately select productive and healthy animals.

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