I am Jeremy Howard, a quantitative livestock geneticist by training with forays into data analytics and optimization. When I started my master's program, I was curious about how to efficiently implement models used in routine livestock evaluations. Like many animal breeding students, I had little to no coding knowledge initially. As I progressed, I became more comfortable with SAS, then R, and eventually dove into C++ during my PhD, where I developed a livestock simulation tool. Over time, I've accumulated a collection of functions commonly used in livestock evaluations, including methods for creating pedigree and genomic relationship matrices. I've also expanded my work to include machine learning and optimization functions. You can find descriptions of these functions under the 'Code' link, along with some developed software. The C++ code is a continuous work in progress, with ongoing efforts to optimize its speed and minimize memory requirements. My hope is that this provides a valuable starting point for those interested in generating breeding values, relationship matrices, machine learning models, or optimization functions. I share my work in the hopes that it will be useful to others, and I hope you find this useful and that it inspires you to explore new coding projects.

Follow the link to get an overview of some of the projects I've worked on, and see how my passion for quantitative genetics, data analytics, and optimization has played out in practice.