Dr Tiffany Kosch

Dr Tiffany Kosch is a Research Fellow with One Health Research Group at the University of Melbourne where she is investigating the genetic architecture of resistance to the fungal disease chytridiomycosis in endangered frogs such as the Australian Southern Corroboree Frog. She applies approaches from genomics, quantitative genetics, synthetic biology, and animal breeding to develop methods to increase chytrid resistance in frogs and improve the success of reintroduction programs.

Tiffany is also the Director of the Amphibian Genomics Consortium which aims to bring together people with an interest in amphibian genomics and functional research and increase the generation of amphibian genomics resources.

Tiffany received her PhD in Interdisciplinary Biology in 2012 from East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, USA where she studied the distribution of chytridiomycosis in Peruvian amphibians and optimised methods for detecting the disease. She has worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Seoul National University in Seoul, South Korea; James Cook University in Townsville, Australia; and Massey University in Hamilton, New Zealand where she has studied MHC variation in chytridiomycosis susceptible and resistant frogs, the evolution and origin of Bd, the genome-wide association of Bd resistance, epistasis in production trait associated genetic variants, and genomic improvement for animal breeding.

Tiffany's research interests include emerging infectious diseases of wildlife, amphibian chytrid fungus, conservation genomics, amphibian genomics, genomic selection, threatened species management, and targeted genetic intervention.