European and Asian talent shine at Alltech Young Scientist Programme

“Growing extensively each year, to more than 5,000 entries in this fifth year since its inception, the goal of the programme is to increase the number of students studying animal science,” said Mark Lyons, director of North America. “This competition is bringing together the brightest scientific thinkers in colleges and universities across the globe.”

This year’s graduate winner is Wai-Fun Leong, who represents the Asia region and is a student at Universiti Putra Malaysia. Leong won with her paper, Preparation and characterisation of sucrose palmitate and sucrose laureate stabilised water-soluble phytosterol nanodispersions.

Yakov Tsepilov, winner of the undergraduate level, submitted The development of new detection and characterisation of salmonella enteric in meat and poultry products. Tsepilov advanced as the regional winner from Russia and is a student at Novosibirsk State University.

To participate in this programme, students wrote a scientific paper based on a topic about animal feed technologies. The first phase of the programme included a competition within each competing country. The winners of each local competition moved on to a regional phase and the regional winners competed in the global phase.

Nine regional winners representing the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America came to Lexington  to compete  to present their research before a panel of international judges, for the graduate grand prize of $10,000 and the undergraduate grand prize of $5,000.

The Alltech Young Scientist Program is currently taking applicants for its 2012 competition. To enter visit the Web site at www.alltechyoungscientist.com.

For further information on Alltech’s 2011 Symposium, please visit www.alltech.com/symposium.