Texas A&M Vet Medicine Prof Katrin Hinrichs Winner Of ICAR 2016 Simmet Prize

Gainesville, Florida – The International Congress of Animal Reproduction (ICAR) announces that Professor Katrin Hinrichs of Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, is the recipient of the 2016 Simmet Prize for Assisted Reproduction. The prize, which is the most prestigious award in animal reproduction and one of the largest of its kind, was awarded based on the pioneering efforts of Dr. Hinrichs to elucidate the fundamental biology of gametes and embryos in the horse and to develop laboratory techniques that have made assisted reproduction technologies in the horse a practical reality. The clinical program in equine assisted reproduction she founded in 2009 in collaboration with the Section of Theriogenology at Texas A&M is now one of the largest in the world and has performed over 450 embryo production procedures in 2015 alone.

Dr. Hinrichs holds the Patsy Link Chair in Mare Reproductive Studies and has joint appointments in the Department of Veterinary Physiology and Pharmacology and the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, Texas A&M. She and her colleagues have been instrumental in the development of assisted reproductive techniques in the horse. Areas in which Dr. Hinrichs and colleagues have made instrumental advances include in vitro maturation of eggs, fertilization by intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection, embryo culture, cloning, cryopreservation of embryos and the use of embryonic biopsy to enable pre-implantation genetic screening.

The Simmet Prize is sponsored by Minitube International and administered by ICAR. The prize, established as a memorial to the accomplishments of Dr. Ludwig Simmet, a pioneer in development of artificial insemination in farm animals and founder of Minitube, recognizes an active research scientist for basic and applied research published during the previous six years in the area of assisted reproduction of animals. The prize is presented each 4 years and includes an award of 50,000 euros.