Smith, Alison Dr

Alison has worked as a biometrician for more than 35 years. Her main interest is the use of linear mixed models for the analysis of data from plant breeding and crop improvement programs. Her early work focussed on the analysis of genotype by environment interaction and the methods she developed are now used in all major plant breeding programs in Australia. Alison has also extensively researched improved methods of experimental design and analysis for plant quality traits that require multi-phase testing. Most recently she has been involved in the development of the Design Tableau approach for specifying linear mixed models for comparative experiments. Alison has published over 60 refereed journal articles and has presented her research at a number of national and international statistical and scientific conferences. She has active links with industry, including most private and public plant breeding programs in Australia. A career highlight was her joint presentation with Brian Cullis of the 39th Fisher Memorial Lecture at Rothamsted, UK in 2019.