Rate My Professor Sabine Schmoelzl

Sabine Schmoelzl, Dr.med.vet., PhD, serves as Principal Research Scientist and Group Leader for Smart, Sustainable Livestock Systems at CSIRO Agriculture and Food in Armidale. Concurrently, she holds an Adjunct Senior Lecturer position at the University of New England’s School of Environmental and Rural Science within the Faculty of Science, Agriculture, Business and Law since 2012. She also maintains an Adjunct Associate Professorship affiliation with UNE. Schmoelzl obtained her PhD in 1995 and Staatsexamen Tiermedizin in 1991 from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany, and veterinarian registration from Bayerische Tierärztekammer in 1991. Her professional trajectory encompasses postdoctoral research on post-transcriptional gene regulation in rat liver and influence of NSAIDs on equine cartilage gene expression at Ontario Veterinary College, Guelph, Canada (1995-1999); research consultancy on gene expression in parasite resistance models and science reporting for annual reports at International Livestock Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya (2002-2003); Research Scientist and Project Leader for Testis Stem Cell Transplantation in Cattle under CSIRO Food Futures Flagship (2008-2013); Team Leader for Animal Monitoring at CSIRO Agriculture & Food (2013-2020); and Chair of the Armidale Animal Ethics Committee, CSIRO (2012-2024).

Her research interests center on sustainable livestock production, particularly developing novel phenomics approaches to address complex industry challenges in reproduction and production. Key efforts include improving lamb survival through on-animal sensors for ewe lambing behaviors and metabolic activity, pen-side metabolic markers for neonatal lambs, proteomics-based biomarkers for dark cutting in beef, and interdisciplinary strategies to bolster drought resilience in Australian livestock. Notable publications comprise "Infrared thermal imaging as a method to evaluate heat loss in newborn lambs" (Labeur et al., 2017, Research in Veterinary Science), "Inclusion of features derived from a mixture of time window sizes improved classification accuracy of machine learning algorithms for sheep grazing behaviours" (Hu et al., 2020, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture), "Automatic detection of parturition in pregnant ewes using a three-axis accelerometer" (Smith et al., 2020, Computers and Electronics in Agriculture), "Postnatal maternal behaviour expression depends on lambing difficulty in Merino ewes" (Redfearn et al., 2023, Theriogenology), and "Claudin-8 expression in Sertoli cells and putative spermatogonial stem cells in the bovine testis" (McMillan et al., 2014, Reproduction, Fertility and Development). Schmoelzl has conducted research across Germany, Canada, Kenya, and Australia, advancing smart sensor technologies and biomarkers for enhanced animal welfare and production efficiency.