Dr. Rebecca Bellone earned her Ph.D. in Equine Genetics from the University of Kentucky in 2001. Since that time, she has led an equine genetics research program involving both undergraduate and graduate students investigating the genetics of traits of economic significance in the horse. The overarching goal of her research program is to identify and understand genetic variation that can explain phenotypes of interest and those of medical importance. Her research team has discovered causal mutations for several pigmentation traits and ocular disorders in horses including coat color dilutions, white patterning, congenital stationary night blindness, distichiasis, and ocular squamous cell carcinoma, among others.  She is currently investigating the genetics of several additional disorders, pigmentation variation, performance traits, and genetic diversity in horses and is working with the team of scientist to gain a better understanding of the regions of the horse genome that regulate tissue specific gene expression.  She was on faculty at the University of Tampa (FL) (2002-2014) where she was a three-time recipient of the College of Natural and Health Sciences Outstanding Scholar Award. In 2014, she joined the faculty in the Department of Population Health and Reproduction at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis and as of November 2017 serves as the director of the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory, a unit of the School with 30 years of experience in DNA testing for parentage and diagnostic markers across species.