Nutreco announces the winners of the Nutreco Young Researchers Prize. The competition acknowledges and champions the most promising research by PhD and post-doctorate students working around the world across animal, aquaculture and veterinary sciences.
In its inaugural year, the competition received 57 outstanding research proposal submissions within the three categories; precision farming, young animal nutrition, and animal health and welfare. The jury interviewed ten shortlisted candidates in a series of virtual interviews. Then, the top three candidates presented their proposals to Nutreco’s CEO Rob Koremans.
“Each of these projects was chosen for its innovativeness, its value to the agricultural industries and its sustainability as a proposal. I would like to congratulate the winners. I was astounded by the quality of research shown by the applicants and it was with great difficulty that we narrowed down the top three winners’ projects. It’s vital that companies like ours support the work being done by excellent young researchers – they are, after all, working on projects that will help us feed the future,” Koremans said.
The winners
In first place, with a cash prize of €12,000, is Sudhanshu Sudan, a PhD researcher of animal biosciences from the University of Guelph in Canada. Sudhanshu’s winning research project looks at combating weaning stress in piglets with next-generation probiotics and antimicrobial peptides.
The winner of the second-place cash prize of €8,000 is Ning Ma from China Agricultural University. Ning’s research explores how weaned piglet selection by probiotic-derived postbiotics influences long-term intestinal health and the purification postbiotics suitable for the neonatal phase.
Finally, the third winner of the Nutreco Young Researchers Prize is Guillermo Bardera from the University of the West of Scotland. Guillermo will receive a cash prize of €5,000 for his research project, which project focuses on assessing feed attractability in Pacific white shrimp using Ethovision tracking software.
The award ceremony was due to take place in May 2020 in Nutreco Headquarters based in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the award ceremony was completed virtually. Once the COVID-19 situation has stabilized and we receive clear guidance that it is safe to travel, the three winners will present their research proposals to the Nutreco Research and Development community at special Global R&D Days in the Netherlands.
