Department News and Updates! January 12, 2018

NEWS & EVENTS

  • Negeen Najafi, Kyra Smart and Derek Wadsworth (undergraduates in the Hess Lab) are recipients of this year’s prestigious Provost Undergraduate Fellowship. This fellowship supports Negeen's, Kyra's and Derek's research efforts to 1) identify molecular markers that enable the prediction of the feed efficiency of cattle, 2) identify novel prebiotics and understand how they affect gut microbiome function and 3) study the role of anaerobic fungi in biomass degradation, respectively.
  • Allison Pullin was elected as the Student Representative for the International Society for Applied Ethology (ISAE).
  • Sarah Klopatek represented the United States and UC Davis as a student fellow at the International Livestock Forum, hosted by Colorado State and the National Western Stock Show.

RESEARCH

  • The Kebreab Lab was awarded a grant by the Gates Foundation to improve nutritional quality and food safety in Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. This is in collaboration with several institutes led by the Livestock Innovation Lab with the total grant amount totaling $8.7 million.
  • Alison Van Eenennaam’s work on gene editing and cattle breeding was featured in MIT Technology Review.

OUTREACH & TRAVEL

  • Alison Van Eenennaam spoke on “Innovation in Agricultural Science” at the 2018 Legislative Agriculture Chairs Summit of State Agriculture and Rural Leaders & Council of State Governments in Kansas City, MO, and at the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) Annual Meeting in Nashville, TN on “Use of Gene Editing in Animal Breeding Programs”, and participated in a panel entitled “Is this the Next Green Revolution?”. She also participated in a screening of Food Evolution at Vanderbilt University with director Scott HamiltonKennedy, sponsored by the US Farmers and Ranchers Alliance.