Gretchen joined the Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences as a PhD student in the Adcock lab in Spring 2021 and defended in Spring 2025. She is now a postdoc at the University of California, Davis in Dr. Maja Makagon’s lab. The focus of her PhD research was investigating the behavioral changes associated with the development of subclinical mastitis in sheep.

Gretchen is originally from Los Angeles, California and earned her B.S. in Animal Science at the University of California, Davis. Over the course of her undergraduate degree, she worked as a research assistant under Dr. Cassandra Tucker studying feed enrichment in dairy calves where she developed a passion studying production animal welfare. She is excited to start working here in Wisconsin, with a goal of continuing to study ways to improve animal lives in the production industry.