2022 Poultry Science Award winners at Iowa State

The 2022 Poultry Science Association Annual Meeting was held on July 11-14, 2022 in San Antonio, Texas. Several members of the Department of Animal Science at Iowa State University were recognized for their efforts in the poultry industry. The annual meeting offered attendees exposure to the latest science and research, while presentations from industry and academia offered a variety of information and opportunities to poultry scientists while recognizing their work.

Dawn Koltes was awarded the PSA Early Achievement Award for Teaching, which recognizes the achievements of PSA members in the early stages of their career in academia. 

As an assistant professor in the Department of Animal Science at Iowa State, most of Dawn’s focus is teaching and engaging students in the poultry industry. Not only does Dawn contribute to teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level in the animal science department, but she also teaches in the Midwest Poultry Consortium Center of Excellence program, outreach programs such as the Iowa FFA Career Development and Educational program and advises the Block and Bridle Poultry Interest Group. In addition to these established programs, Dawn has revitalized a poultry course that facilitates interactions between students and poultry allied industry groups and, in collaboration with Iowa Turkey Federation, has started an Iowa Turkey Internship program to highlight the value of the poultry industries to students. In the last 5 years, Dawn has fostered 6 independent poultry-related research projects, which have resulted in 5 abstracts presented by undergraduates at national conferences.

Michael Kaiser was awarded the Tyson Foods Inc. Support Personnel Award, which acknowledges the contributions by support personnel and outstanding support of research, extension, or teaching programs in poultry science.

Kaiser has spent his entire career in support of the poultry genetics and immunology program at Iowa State. He is an integral part of the research team that conducts studies on the molecular genetic control of important biological traits in poultry. This has emphasized host genetic resistance to many pathogens that affect poultry health and food safety, and also genetic resilience to heat stress. He provides important support to the maintenance of the ISU chicken genetic lines. Michael has trained the next generation of poultry scientists by mentoring over 30 undergraduate students, 30 graduate students, 15 visiting scholars and postdocs, and many summer interns in a wide variety of lab procedures. He has published 27 peer-reviewed papers, with 10 as first author, and 41 conference abstracts.

Elizabeth Bobeck was awarded the PSA Early Achievement Award for Research recognizing the achievements of PSA members in the early stages of their career in poultry research. 

Bobeck is an associate professor in the Department of Animal Science and her research and teaching efforts focus on the poultry industry from different angles with the same intent: to use nutrition to improve poultry health, productivity, and welfare. Her lab employs cell culture, ex vivo cells and tissues, and whole animal models to answer questions related to bioactive components of feedstuffs, growth, performance, disease resistance, microbiome, and the immune system. To understand genetic links to the immune response and how to best support poultry at different production stages, she also investigates basic metabolic questions such as fuel preference in isolated primary immune cells. Related projects involve close work with industry to understand feedstuff digestibility and nutrition to enhance performance. Bobeck has 41 refereed publications and 34 abstracts and has raised over $2.5 million dollars to support her laboratory research and teaching goals.

Read more about the 2022 PSA award winners here: https://poultryscience.org/About-Awards-2022

award winners

Left to Right: Dawn Koltes, Michael Kaiser and Elizabeth Bobeck