News and Events
Gareth Burns, IAFLU PhD student, wins award at British Grassland Society Research Conference
The 10th British Grassland Society Research Conference was held recently at Agri-Food & Biosciences Institute (AFBI) Hillsborough with over 100 delegates attending from throughout the UK and Ireland.
President of the British Grassland Society, John Downes awarded local PhD student, Gareth Burns, the Best Theatre presentation for his work on identifying ryegrass characteristics using Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS).
Gareth is currently carrying out his PhD at the Institute of Agri-Food and Land Use (IAFLU), Queen's University Belfast, on the application of NIRS to measure the nutritive quality of ryegrass varieties in recommended list trials. Gareth is supervised by Dr Trevor Gilliland (AFBI), Dr Padraig O'Kiely (Teagasc) and Prof Chris Elliott (IAFLU). Gareth's studies are funded by a Teagasc Walsh Fellowship.
Queen’s University leads €3 million food safety project
A €3 million research project to improve the safety of animal feeds and the entire European animal-based food chain, has been launched at Queen's.
The global QSAFFE project (Quality and Safety of Feeds and Food for Europe) will deliver better ways to ensure the quality and safety of animal feeds in Europe. It is led by Queen's Centre for Assured, Safe and Traceable Food (ASSET) and involves 11 partners from six countries (UK, Belgium, Holland, Czech Republic, Germany and China).
The Society for Contract Researchers & Postdoctoral Staff (SCR&PS) was established in 2010 in response to the needs of the growing number of contract research staff (CRS) working within the Institute of Agri-Food and Land Use (IAFLU). All contract staff, whether full time or part time, working within IAFLU are welcome to become members of SCR&PS.
The SCR&PS mission is to represent, assist and engage CRS in IAFLU to identify solutions for improving personal development, career progression and social interaction so that CRS can recognise their full potential.
IST Travel Scholarship Award
Caroline Frizzell, a member of the ASSET research group and a part-time PhD student in IAFLU has recently been awarded a travel scholarship from the Irish Society of Toxicology. She will attend the Gordon Research Conference on Environmental Endocrine Disruptors, Les Diablerets, Switzerland on 30th May-4th June 2010. Here she will present a poster on her current project which investigates mycotoxins found in food and their potential to act as endocrine disruptors.Dr Simon Haughey has won an Innovators 2009 Award from Perkin Elmer to investigate the use of Raman Spectroscopy in the Animal Feed Industry.
International Collaborations
A Framework Agreement for Institutional Collaboration between Queen's University Belfast (QUB) and the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIMM) has recently been signed for the period 2008 - 2014. This agreement facilitates collaborations between SIMM and QUB in the areas of doctoral studentships, exchange of faculty, staff, research scholars and joint research and symposia. It also permits collaboration between the two institutions in research in the area of natural product development, doctoral studentships, graduate and undergraduate exchanges, and faculty exchanges. Dr Chen Situ, a Lecturer in the Food Safety Group (c.situ@qub.ac.uk) will coordinate all collaborative activities which will be centred in the Institute of Agri-Food and Land Use (IAFLU) but may also be performed in conjunction with other research units within the relevant QUB research clusters.
Travel Grant
Shauna Devlin, a 2nd year PhD student, has been awarded a travel grant by the Irish Society of Toxicology. This will enable her to visit the Connell Laboratory at the University of Maine, who are world renowned experts in sensor based detection of toxin producing algae and bacteria. This will open up the opportunity to investigate the use of different detection methods to allow the simultaneous detection of Microcystins and Microcystin producing organisms.