Misty Davis

Hi!  My name is Misty Davis; I am a Research Assistant in the Milking Research & Instruction Lab and a graduate student studying under Doug Reinemann.  I am originally from and currently live near Brooklyn, WI and have earned my BS and MS in Agricultural Engineering here at the University of WI-Madison.

My Master’s research was done under Doug Reinemann and Graeme Mein and involved the relationships between the changes in physical properties and milking characteristics of aging liners (milking inflations).  My PhD topic involves development of a mastitis sensor for robotic milking systems.  Most of my conference papers can be found on this website, if you’d like to learn more.  My professional memberships include American Society of Agricultural Engineers http://www.asae.org, National Mastitis Council http://www.nmconline.org, Wisconsin Dairy Goat Association, Graduate Women in Science http://www.gwis.org and Gamma Sigma Delta (the national honor society of agriculture) http://gammasigmadelta.org.

My interests are like my personality and are quite diverse.  I have a love of goats and would like to become active in milking research of small ruminants some day.  I am also active in promotion of women in math and science and have participated in the Expanding Your Horizons program (a “day on campus” for 6^th – 8^th grade girls) for the last two years.  A future initiative of mine is to develop a committee for the advancement of rural students at large universities, such as UW-Madison.

I grew up on a pig farm, which is still operating today.  As you can tell from my pictures I have a great love for animals, which, combined with my love of math and science, enables me to really enjoy what I do.  I am equally comfortable CMT’ing a cow or hooking up vacuum transducers and developing a data acquisition program to record data during a milking experiment.

In my spare time I enjoy being outside, gardening, cleaning, exercising, playing with pets, maintaining and washing my two big cars, traveling, boating or relaxing.  I am also a member of the “Girls Love Dirt” tug of war team in the summer.  In the cold Wisconsin wintertime, I enjoy singing karaoke (Patsy Cline is my favorite) and researching family history.