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Canadians take home the top prize in both categories
The audience was singing Oh Canada as two University of Guelph students took home the top prize when global animal health company, Alltech announced the prestigious winners of its annual Young Scientist competition during Tuesday's general session at its 26th Annual Animal Health and Nutrition Symposium held in Lexington, Kentucky. The award has gone from strength to strength, growing from 75 entrants in its first year, to more than 5,000 five years later. The goal of the program is to increase the number of students studying animal science, thus creating a brain gain that will improve the technology available to farmers around the world.
The graduate level winner was Michael Steele from the University of Guelph in Canada, with a groundbreaking research paper that examined the molecular mechanisms underlying rumen epithelial adaption to high grain diets in dairy cattle. He utilized transcriptomic data to reveal the potential metabolic mechanisms involved in how the cells adapt during ruminal acidosis.
Discussing my research with the world best agricultural scientists present at this meeting has made this one of the most exciting weeks of my life and the best part of the competition, said Steele.
The undergraduate winner was Lee Ann Huber, also from the University of Guelph. She carried out very important new research examining amino acid use in swine diets, specifically the previously ignored area of optimal ratio of isoleucine to lysine in pig starter diets.
Canada was well represented this year in the competition and among the North American winners were: North America Graduate overall winner: Michael Steele, University of Guelph, North America Graduate Second Place winner: Daniel Columbus, University of Guelph, North America Graduate Third Place winner: Anice Thomas, University of Guelph, North America Undergraduate overall winner: Lee-Anne Huber, University of Guelph, North America Undergraduate Second Place winner: Laura Norton, University of Guelph and North America Undergraduate Third Place winner: Heather Wilton, University of Manitoba.
This competition was an amazing learning experience and every university student should take advantage of this opportunity, said Huber.
These students are outstanding examples of young scientists with an ability to communicate their research both to other scientists and to the public, with a strong dedication to our industry, a passion for research, and an unflagging determination to increase animal health using state of the art laboratory technologies combined with field experimentation, said Young Scientist Program Director Dr. Inge Russell.
To participate, students wrote a scientific paper based on a topic about animal feed technologies. The first phase of the program includes a competition within each competing country. The winners of each local competition move on to a regional phase and the regional winners compete in the global phase
In the past the program featured only undergraduate students, but was expanded last year to feature graduate students. This year the program was expanded once again with a regional competition for Africa and the Middle East and with increased topic areas that span agricultural science. Ten regional winners representing Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America came to Lexington to compete by presenting their research before a panel of judges, for the graduate grand prize of $10,000 and the undergraduate grand prize $5000.
Our desire to have this program continually grow will encourage students interested in the field of agricultural science, as well as continue our dedication to young people and research, said Alltech president and founder, Dr. Pearse Lyons. From the first year, our rate of applicants has grown from 75 registrants to over 5,000 registrants. We hope to eventually have 50,000 potential young scientists take part in our annual program.
For more information on Alltech's Young Scientist award program and for details for 2011, please visit: www.alltechyoungscientist.com.
Alltech is the proud title sponsor of the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, to be held in Lexington, KY, USA from September 25 October 10, 2010. Held outside of Europe for the first time, the 16-day competition involving more than 800 riding competitors and 800 horses representing 60 countries is expected to be attended by as many as 600,000 spectators and viewed on television by an international audience exceeding 460 million people.
Tickets have already been sold to enthusiasts in all 50 U.S. states and 50 countries. For more information on the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games and to purchase tickets while they are still available, visit www.alltechfeigames.com.
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