Summer Internship - Molecular Genetics of Bull Fertility

LIC’s Research and Development (R&D) group is driving innovation to keep New Zealand farmers and their businesses at the forefront of the global dairy industry. Our world-class team is actively engaged in cutting-edge work across genetics, genomics, reproduction, animal health, statistics, and machine learning.

In partnership with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, we’re offering summer internships that provide hands-on experience across a diverse range of scientific and technical areas—from genetic analysis to data science and modelling—leveraging both in-house and cloud-based computing platform.

Project Details:

Identification and Prioritisation of Candidate Genetic Variants Influencing Bull Fertility

Project scope:

Bull fertility is a complex trait of major importance to the dairy industry and is influenced by numerous biological processes affecting semen quality, sperm morphology, and reproductive performance. LIC has undertaken extensive genome-wide association studies of male fertility-related traits, generating a large catalogue of genomic regions and candidate variants associated with semen quality, morphology, and non-return rate outcomes. This project will focus on the biological interpretation and prioritization of candidate variants identified through these analyses. The student will investigate a curated set of significant variants and their associated genomic annotations to identify genes and biological pathways that may contribute to reproductive performance in dairy cattle. The project aims to uncover additional high-value candidate variants that may have been overlooked during initial analyses and generate biological insights to support future fertility research.

Your contribution:

The successful student will analyse a catalogue of candidate variants derived from genome-wide association studies of semen quality, sperm morphology, and fertility traits. They will:

• Review variant annotations, predicted functional consequences, and associated effect sizes.

• Conduct literature reviews to investigate the biological relevance of candidate genes and genomic regions.

• Evaluate relationships between candidate variants and reproductive traits across multiple analyses.

• Develop a prioritized list of high-interest variants and genes for future validation and investigation.

• Present findings to the LIC Research and Development team and provide a written report summarising key outcomes.

Expected Outputs:

This project will deliver a detailed assessment of fertility-related genetic variants identified through recent genomic analyses, while leveraging existing datasets to uncover additional variants, genes, and biological pathways associated with bull fertility. We expect this work to generate new insights into the genetic factors influencing reproductive performance in dairy bulls, providing valuable evidence to inform future research and support the ongoing development of genomic tools for fertility improvement.

Key Skills Required:

• This project is suited to a third-year or postgraduate biology, genetics, bioinformatics, or animal science student.

• Familiarity with genetics and genomic data would be advantageous, although a strong interest in genomics and biological research is equally important.

• The student should have strong critical thinking and literature review skills, experience using scientific literature databases (e.g. PubMed), and the ability to synthesise information from multiple sources.

• Previous experience with bioinformatics tools, genomic annotations, or high-performance computing would be beneficial but is not required.

To be eligible for these internships students must be:

• Legally permitted to work in New Zealand.

• Studying, or have studied, an undergraduate or postgraduate qualification at NZQA level 6-10. If study has been completed, the final semester should have ended within the last 12 months.

• Studying, or have studied, science, technology, engineering, design or business at a New Zealand tertiary education institute.

• Be able to work on-site at our Head Office in Newstead Hamilton for the duration of the internship

Application information:

If you have worked for LIC before, you can still apply if:

• your job was part-time or temporary

• you only held one R&D Experience Grant internship with LIC.

Please attach an up-to-date CV and your academic transcript with your application.

The internship is a paid opportunity offering $29.90 per hour for a period of 10 weeks. You will be required to work a minimum of 30 hours per week, up to a maximum of 400 hours to be completed by 31 March 2027. Participation in the project will be based physically at LIC. At the conclusion of the internship, you will be required to deliver a presentation and submit a report

Applications close: 13 September 2026 or earlier if the roles are filled.