32nd Annual Australian Poultry Science Symposium

Dr. Renema holds a Ph.D. in Animal Science (1997) from the University of Alberta, specializing in poultry growth, reproductive physiology, and management. He has studied the optimization of growth and reproductive processes in commercial poultry, as well as connections between maternal and offspring yield and efficiency traits in broiler breeders. His research has contributed to increased understanding of the impact of nutrient absorption, transport, distribution, and utilization on growth and reproduction of poultry.

He has been working for the Alberta Chicken Producers since 2014. There he works in the areas of broiler management, flock health and welfare, poultry research, and producer education. As part of this role, he works closely with researchers and industry partners to understand the impact genetic selection, bird physiology, and production requirements have on poultry management at the farm level, and on the sustainability of current management practices.

Dr. Renema has 67 refereed publications 2 books, 8 book chapters and 82 conference proceedings. He has an additional 44 tech transfer publications, 145 scientific conference abstracts and has done over 250 industry presentations.

Professor and Extension Specialist, Prestage Department of Poultry Science, North Carolina State University has been on faculty since 1990. Ken Anderson was raised on a poultry layer farm near Morris, IL. He received his BS in 1979 from Southern Illinois University- Carbondale in Animal and Agricultural Industries. Worked as the General Manager of State Line Egg Producers Cooperative, Inc., Beatrice, NE a Poultry Cooperative headquartered in Kansas for 3.5 years. In 1983 he accepted the Superintendents position at the T.B. Avery Poultry Research Unit with a research/teaching appointment in the Dept. of Animal Science at Kansas State University. Simultaneously, he completed his MS in 1987 and PhD. in 1990 in Poultry Management.
In 2018, he received the CAST Educational Materials Award, Certificate of Excellence for all of the authors efforts in creation of “Impact of Free-range Poultry Production Systems on Animal Health, Human Health, Productivity, Environment, Food Safety, and Animal Welfare Issues”. In 2019, he and his team received the NCACES Outstanding Subject Matter Program Team Award: Egg Industry Training Program on “Ventilation Shutdown Plus (VSD+) Training” and he received the USPOULTRY: Dr. Charles Beard Research Excellence Award, in recognition of outstanding Research for the Poultry Industry. This year, Dr. Anderson was inducted as a PSA Fellow and received the Evonik award for Achievements in Poultry Science.

Dr. Glenmer Tactacan received his Bachelor’s (1995) and Master’s degree (2001) in Animal Science at the University of the Philippines in Los, Banos, Laguna, Philippines. In 2007, he joined the PhD program of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada where he received his doctorate degree in Animal Science in 2011. He is presently working with Jefo Nutrition as part of the company’s R&D and international technical service team.

Mahmoud Khalil, from Egypt, works as Assistant Lecturer at Faculty of Agriculture, Benha ‎University. Completed his Master’s degree from the University of Western Australia. Currently, ‎he is studying his PhD at Massey University funded by the New Zealand Government ‎Scholarship. His research interests focus on “Factors affecting the energy utilisation of ‎feed ingredients for broiler chickens”. ‎

Laura is reading her PhD in third year at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand. Her study is related to the measurement of calcium digestibility in poultry. She originally comes from Sri Lanka and she did her BSc degree in Agriculture and MPhil degree in Poultry Science and Technology, in Sri Lanka.

Shemil is a Ph.D. student at the University of Sydney and his main concentrated area are protein digestive dynamics and amino acid requirements in poultry. He completed his bachelor's degree in Animal Science at Uva Wellassa University in Sri Lanka and a master's degree in Animal Nutrition (Monogastrics) at Chungnam National University in South Korea.

Shiva is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. Her research is focused on amino acid utilisation in reduced crude protein diets of chickens. Shiva holds a Master of Animal Science (Animal Nutrition) from the University of Sydney and a Bachelor of Science (Zoology) from Western Sydney University. In addition to her poultry work, Shiva is a registered Animal Nutritionist specialising in companion animal nutrition.

Peter is currently completing a PhD in poultry nutrition at the University of Sydney with Dr Sonia Liu and Dr Peter Selle, investigating reduced protein diets in broiler chickens.
Peter has extensive commercial experience in both monogastric feeds and vitamin and trace mineral premix manufacture. He has worked as a nutritionist for the largest poultry integrators in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, where he currently works for Baiada Poultry, based in Sydney. Peter has presented at a number of conferences around the globe and been both author and co-author of several peer reviewed publications.

After working in pig production, and then as a senior nutritionist for Rivalea for 12 years, David joined Feedworks in 2003 as the Technical Services Manager developing nutritional solutions to enhance efficient growth and health of monogastrics. David completed a Masters and PhD at the University of New England, and has over 40 papers published in peer reviewed journals and over 60 papers in conference proceedings, in the areas of NSP fibre digestion, enzyme applications, amino acid nutrition and general digestive physiology.

Dr Rebecca Forder is currently a Senior Lecturer the School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences (SAVS), The University of Adelaide, teaching anatomy, physiology and poultry production. Her research interests relate to gastrointestinal development and physiology as a means to enhance lifelong productivity of animals in intensive farming systems. Dr Forder’s interests have expanded into the area of developmental programming and how the maternal environment influences gastrointestinal development and performance of their progeny.

Nipuna Perera works as a lecturer in the Department of Animal Science, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. Her major research interest is on the evaluation of alternative feed ingredients for poultry diets. She completed her PhD on "Influence of feed processing and enzyme supplementation on performance, nutrient utilisation and gut morphology of poultry fed barley-based diets" from Massey University, New Zealand in 2020.

Peter Selle was awarded his PhD in 2001 many years after graduating as a veterinarian. Peter joined the Poultry Research Foundation within the University of Sydney the following year and was subsequently appointed Adjunct Associate Professor. Since 1999, Peter has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals, several book chapters and has been made numerous presentations at international and local conferences, especially the Australian Poultry Science Symposium. Peter’s interests include dietary phytate and exogenous phytase, sorghum as a feed grain for chicken-meat production, whole grain feeding, starch and protein digestive dynamics and reduced-crude protein diets for broiler chickens.

Dr Moss is a postdoctoral fellow researching nutritional strategies to improve the efficiency and sustainability of chicken-meat production. Dr Moss’ current research projects include assessing the impact of variability in feed ingredients on diet formulation and profits, building a database of nutrient specifications for Australian feed ingredients, and exploring the precision feeding of broilers.

Dr Sonia Liu is a senior lecturer in poultry nutrition at the University of Sydney. Her current research interests include digestive dynamics of nutrients, nutritional geometry, sorghum in poultry diet, reduced protein diets and layer nutrition. Sonia has more than 100 scientific communications including 68 papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. She was the recipient of 2019 Australia Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, 2018 Australian Award: Endeavour Fellowship and 2015 Science and Innovation Award for Young People in Agriculture.

Dr Mehdi Toghyani is a postdoctoral research fellow at Sydney University. Mehdi received his PhD in poultry Nutrition from University of New England in 2016. Mehdi is actively involved in poultry research related to nutritional evaluation of alternative feed ingredients, energy and amino acids metabolism, trace minerals nutrition and evaluation of novel feed additives and enzymes.

Dr. Nishchal Sharma has more than 12 years of experience in poultry nutrition in industry and academia. He has a PhD in poultry nutrition from UNE. Dr. Sharma has five years of experience as a technical manager in the Asian poultry industry, and two years of experience as an animal nutrition consultant in South Australia where he was working for both poultry and pig industries.

Dr Natalie Morgan is currently a Research Fellow in Poultry Nutrition and Lecturer in Animal Nutrition at University of New England. She has over 10 years of experience in poultry nutrition research. She completed her PhD in Poultry Nutrition (2010-2014) and a one year Post-Doc (2014-2015) at Nottingham Trent University, UK, and has been conducting research in non-starch polysaccharides and xylo-oligosaccharides at UNE for the past five years. This has resulted in a number of publications and conference presentations in this field, including international invited speaker invitations.

Head of Technical Services for Kemin Asia. Responsible for providing technical leadership and support for the APAC region while working closely with product managers, customer laboratory services, and technical managers in the field.

A poultry veterinarian with a strong background and knowledge in gut health and, at the same time, well-experienced in Feed Formulations, Feed Technology and Milling. Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Philippines, and went on to pursue his Master’s degree in Mississippi State University under the Fulbright scholarship program.

After getting his PhD in animal nutrition end 2011 and being researcher at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Turin (Italy) working on unconventional feed ingredients on various species (poultry, swine, rabbit and fish), Michele De Marco became free-lance poultry nutritionist consultant for 2 years in Italy. In March 2016 he went to France to work for a French premix company as R&D poultry manager. In April 2018 he joined Adisseo as a Global Technical Manager for Selisseo®. At today he is author or co-author of more than 30 peer reviewed publications.

Rick Kleyn received a Master's degree in Poultry Nutrition from the University of Natal (now Kwa-Zulu Natal). After spending time in the feed industry, he started his own nutritional consultancy company, SPESFEED Consulting, in 1989. He principally works in Africa but has had considerable exposure to European and Asian production systems. Rick has written a new book, together with Peter Chrystal, entitled "Broiler Nutrition Masterclass".