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:

Title:

Leveraging Calf Defect Data to Identify Emerging Genetic Conditions in Dairy Cattle

Project scope:

LIC has a number of methods for reducing and managing the negative impacts of genetic disease on the New Zealand dairy cattle population. One of these is defect management, which relies on information collected through the LIC Calf Defect Form and calving comments recorded in MINDA. The LIC Calf Defect Form allows farmers to report calves born with defects, including details of the defect and the likely sire. In addition, MINDA enables farmers to record calving comments by selecting defect categories for calves born to recorded dams. Together, these systems provide valuable information on calf defects occurring across herds. The LIC Defect Team reviews and manages these data, investigating cases where calves with similar defects are reported from multiple farms and are linked to the same bull. This project aims to refresh and improve the current process by ensuring the data are captured and utilised effectively, developing a more structured workflow, and refining defect records into meaningful phenotypes that can support future genetic variant discovery.

Your contribution:

The successful student will begin by organising and categorising calf data, helping to establish a structured and efficient data management workflow. Building on this foundation, they will analyse the data to identify emerging trends and patterns, with the opportunity to uncover potential new traits, or conditions that could support future genetic research and discovery.

Outputs:

This project provides a unique opportunity to make a meaningful impact by improving how calf defect data is analysed and interpreted. Through the development of a more robust and streamlined workflow, you'll help unlock valuable insights, enhance data quality, and support the identification of emerging genetic trends within the dairy industry.

Key Skills Required:

• Knowledge on either animal/human disease OR data analysis in R/python

• Willingness to learn

• Strong excel expertise

• Problem solving

• Veterinary, genetics or data science students are particularly encouraged to apply

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