in the top 20 journals in each field over the past 5 years. The winner must have done research work published in the 10 years immediately preceding the year of recognition, performed research in any area of animal breeding and genetics that had or has the potential for improvement of dairy cattle. The 2018 Agriculture Victoria Awards category “Excellence in Scientific Impact” winner for ImProving Herds. ImProving Herds was an innovative and collaborative herd improvement research, development, extension and education project concluding in 2018. It was important because it spelt out the importance and role of herd improvement to dairy farmers and the broader dairy industry. It was significant because it quantified the economic importance of genetic improvement by comparing breeding indices to real economic farm data, which has only been done once before in the dairy sector. ImProving Herds culminated in one of Australia’s largest on-farm dairy events, “The National Muster” which was attended by over 300 farmers and advisors. The 2019 Agriculture Victoria Awards category “Excellence in Scientific Impact” winner for “Excellence in Discovery and Invention” for Classifying the fertility of dairy cows using mid-infrared spectroscopy Drs Phuong Ho, Tim Luke and Jennie Pryce from Genomic and Cellular Sciences have developed a model that can predict how likely a dairy cow is to conceive to first insemination with up to 77 per cent accuracy. The 2019 Agriculture Victoria Awards category “Excellence in Leadership” winner. This citation reads: “Professor Jennie Pryce is an outstanding nomination for the Leadership award category given the impact and dimensions of her leadership. She has provided outstanding and clear science leadership (scholarly and impact leadership), team leaderships, collaboration leadership nationally and international collaboration as well as industry translation and adoption. She is also an outstanding team, program and project leader and models agriculture values. Professor Pryce is highly skilled at communication and influence, and in clearly explaining complex science and evidence to academic peers and lay audiences. Jennie leads a major part of the most important innovation program for the Dairy Industry – DairyBio - making profitability improvements on farm. This innovation is critical to the dairy industry – regional Victoria’s largest employer and a $1 billion export industry for the state. Professor Pryce has led development and delivering of successful research, worked to build industry groups’ understanding and adoption, and led development of tools for direct benefit on farm by most farmers. Leading