Patrick Cunningham is Chief Scientific Adviser to the Irish Government and Professor of Animal Genetics in Trinity College, Dublin. He holds Bachelors and Masters Degrees from the National University of Ireland, a PhD from Cornell University, USA, and Honorary Doctorates from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and the University of Dublin. He was formerly Deputy Director (Research) at An Foras Talúntais, now Teagasc, (1980-88), visiting Professor at the Economic Development Institute, World Bank (1988) and Director of the Animal Production and Health Division, Food & Agriculture Organisation of the UN, Rome (1990-93). During this period he directed the Screwworm Eradication Programme for North Africa, the largest international campaign of biological control ever undertaken. Prof. Cunningham’s early research focused on quantitative genetic methods of improving animal populations, and on the economic evaluation of breeding strategies. In the 1990s he exploited newly-developed methods of reading DNA to measure genetic diversity and plan livestock improvement in developing countries. The first results of this work rewrote the history of animal domestication, demonstrating for the first time the separate domestication of cattle in India on the one hand and in Africa and Europe on the other. This work has since been expanded by Prof. Cunningham and his colleagues to other species including horses, salmon and humans. Prof. Cunningham’s research has been published in some 100 papers in refereed journals, and has twice featured on the cover of Nature. Following the BSE crisis in 1996, Professor Cunningham and his colleagues developed a system of DNA traceability for the meat industry, which has been used throughout Europe since. They went on to establish a biotechnology company IdentiGEN, which deploys these technologies in Europe and the USA. Professor Cunningham is the chairman of the company. Professor Cunningham recently chaired a high-level committee of representatives from science, education and industry which competed successfully to host the European City of Science in Dublin, in 2012.