Dr. Hiruni Wijesena received her Ph.D in Animal Breeding and Genetics in 2020 from University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is currently serving as a postdoctoral fellow at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, Clay Center, NE. Her broad research interests include meat safety and livestock production. She is specifically interested in microbial and livestock genomics and bioinformatics research that involve constructing pipelines for next generation sequence analysis, comparative genomics, and developing bioinformatics tools for industry and research use. Dr. Wijesena has developed a bioinformatics pipeline that provides a thorough representation of the relatedness between Salmonella isolates associated with major meat commodities. Her livestock genomics research includes identifying genetic markers associated with reproductive traits that can be utilized to improve the accuracy of genomic prediction for reproductive longevity. Dr. Wijesena is excited to be a part of this research community and share her knowledge and skills with industry and academic partners.