Albuquerque, NM

Kirsten Dimmler, a Bioinformatics Analyst at EquiSeq, has accepted an offer of admission to graduate school in the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Kirsten will be entering the laboratory of Dr. Molly McCue, a leading veterinary expert in the field of equine genetics and genomics. Her admission to graduate school was originally scheduled for the fall of 2020, but has been deferred to January 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kirsten began her career at EquiSeq with an internship while still an undergraduate biology major at the University of New Mexico. Following her graduation with a B.S. in Biology in December 2017, she began work at EquiSeq in bioinformatics. Her research involved evaluating potentially pathogenic mutations discovered in whole genome sequence data from horses with symptoms of exercise intolerance. The work led to a patent filing and the development of commercial genetic tests for horses.

Kirsten was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has a passion for animals and had a goal of one day becoming a veterinarian. She purchased her first horse, an Appendix Quarter Horse mare named Esperanza, as a teenager and went on to compete in hunter/jumper with her. When Esperanza developed symptoms of PSSM2, Kirsten became involved with the research being done at EquiSeq and discovered a passion for research that led her to applying to the University of Minnesota for her PhD.

Dr. McCue’s laboratory uses the latest molecular genetics and genomics tools to study complex genetic disease, physiological variation, and genetic diversity in equine populations. Their goal is to improve equine health through the understanding of complex genetic disease, allowing veterinarians to better predict, diagnose, and treat genetic disease, and to improve human health through the use of the horse as a biomedical model.