Anouk Schurink joins AbacusBio with her applied mindset and strong experience in horse breeding, quantitative genetics, genomic analyses, and genetic diversity.

Born and raised on the countryside in the east of the Netherlands, Anouk got intrigued by Mendel’s Law in high school when attempting an assignment about the inheritance of flower colours.

After obtaining a PhD, she moved on to post-doctoral research work looking at breeding against heritable diseases in horses.

She then spent her following years as a breeding specialist at the Royal Dutch Sport Horse Studbook and as a researcher and project manager at the Centre for Genetic Resources, the Netherlands.

At AbacusBio, she will be working on various projects, particularly with developing countries such as Uganda, that focuses on improving and developing new product varieties.

Anouk’s career highlights include:

• Development of DNA-tests to identify carriers of dwarfism and hydrocephalus in Friesian horses (Dutch native breed)
• A significant contribution to the development and introduction of genomic selection against osteochondrosis in the Dutch Sport Horse population
• The development and introduction of a genomic tool and related protocol to determine breed purity of native Dutch cattle