Lallemand Animal Nutrition Offers Scholarships
Lallemand Animal Nutrition is offering the Lallemand Forward Scholarship for students pursuing degrees in agriculture. The 2021 program offers two $2,500 undergraduate scholarships, one $3,000 Doctor of Veterinary Medicine scholarship, one $3,000 master’s program scholarship and one $3,000 doctoral scholarship. Applications are open to students in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
“Over the past several years, we have received an outstanding number of applicants with a strong passion for the industry,” Jeff Ast, Commercial Director, North and South America, Lallemand Animal Nutrition, said in a release. “Our continued investment into the program is driven by our company goals of enhancing knowledge and production practices, while continuing to help drive the animal agriculture industry forward.”
Find the full guidelines here.
All scholarship submissions are due to lanscholarship@lallemand.com by Sept. 30.
Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research Announces Vet Student Research Fellowships
The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) is excited to announce the fourteen recipients of the 2021 Veterinary Student Research Fellowships (Vet Fellows) in partnership with the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC). This fellowship creates opportunities for veterinary students to pursue research on global food security and sustainable animal production, the company said in a release.
The FFAR Vet Fellows program invests in future veterinarians and provides the opportunity to pursue research expertise outside of the traditional biomedical course. Veterinarians trained in multi-species medicine, animal science and public health are key to addressing many real-world challenges. The three-month fellowship culminates with student presentations at the annual National Veterinary Scholars Symposium in August.
The FFAR Vet Fellows program supports student research on agricultural productivity, public health and environmental sustainability. FFAR and AAVMC adjusted the parameters of the fellowship in response to the COVID-19 crisis to also include zoonotic or pandemic research. Due to the urgent nature of this research, the Vet Fellows were not required to provide matching funds. The 2021 Vet Fellows are also not required to provide matching funds, allowing them to focus exclusively on their research.
2021 FFAR Vet Fellows studying swine or related areas include:
Kim Nguyen, University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine
The Center for Animal Health and Food Safety at the University of Minnesota developed an event-based biosurveillance system that helps prevent the introduction of foreign pathogens into the U.S. by gathering and analyzing data on environmental health sources. Nguyen is evaluating the impact of this system and contrasting its sensitivity to other global surveillance systems used for monitoring emerging animal diseases.
Carmen-Maria Garcia, Michigan State University
Livestock are exposed to a multitude of environmental and social stressors, which impact health, wellbeing and performance. Early weaning (EW) in swine production is linked with increased disease risk and reduced performance over the pig’s lifetime. How EW practices lead to long-term disease vulnerability is unknown and targeted interventions are lacking. Garcia’s research is examining whether EW pigs’ immune systems exhibit stress-induced glucose use, which could drive inflammation and increased disease risk.
Daniella Burleson, Texas A&M University
Nontyphoidal salmonella infections, caused by the bacterium Salmonella enterica, are a significant public health problem in the U.S. Characterized by symptoms such as nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, nontyphoidal salmonella infections can spread to humans who eat contaminated animal products. Burleson is using droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) technology, a technique that partitions nucleic acid samples into thousands of droplets and amplifies DNA or RNA targets, to detect and quantify antimicrobial resistance genes in nontyphoidal Salmonella enterica from cattle fecal samples. This work helps researchers better understand antimicrobial resistance in animals and the environment.
Courtney Wangler, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Influenza A virus (swine flu) is an endemic pathogen of pigs that can cause significant illness and is difficult to control. Wangler’s research seeks to develop a rapid, low-cost test to determine the presence of influenza A in swine herds, enabling appropriate disease control interventions.
Jayden McCall, Kansas State University
African swine fever virus (ASFV) causes a highly contagious and deadly disease of swine for which there is no vaccine. McCall is identifying protective antigens, viral proteins that produce a protective immune response in the body, within the ASFV genome. This information is critical to developing an efficient vaccine against ASFV, greatly benefitting global pork producers.
