Noelle Cockett, Ph.D.

Field: Agriculture, Animal Science
Areas of Focus: Genetics, Genomics, Livestock

Expertise

• Sheep genomics
• Sheep genetics
• Livestock genomics

Bio

After receiving her bachelor’s degree in animal science from Montana State University and master’s degree and doctorate degrees in animal breeding and genetics from Oregon State University, Noelle Cockett spent five years as a research geneticist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Nebraska. She joined Utah State University in 1990 and has served in several administrative positions, including the dean of the College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, the vice president for Extension, the director of the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, and the executive vice president and provost. Cockett began her official tenure as USU’s 16th university president in January 2017 and served in that position until July 2023. 

Cockett's research program has centered on the identification of genetic markers associated with economically important traits in sheep, as well as the development of resources that advance research on the sheep genome. Her research program has received continuous competitive funding from the USDA since 1993. Cockett and her colleagues published an article describing the sheep genome sequence in Science in 2014. Her current project focuses on the identification of genetic regions associated with entropion in newborn lambs, and her lab is contributing to the Ovine Functional Annotation of Animal Genomes (FAANG) project. She has served as the United States coordinator for sheep genome mapping since 1993 and is an active member of the International Sheep Genomics Consortium.

As an active researcher, Cockett has received many awards and accolades throughout her career including a Young Scientist Award from the Western Section of the American Society of Animal Science, the Utah Governor's Medal for Science and Technology (2004 and 2015) and one of USU’s top honors, the D. Wynne Thorne Research Award.