GSD Leadership

Conor McCabe is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Davis, studying dairy cattle sustainability under the guidance of Dr. Frank Mitloehner.

The upcoming ADSA Annual Meeting in West Palm Beach will be the tenth that McCabe has attended, going all the way back to his freshman year of undergrad. He continues to be amazed by the opportunities that ADSA gives us as graduate students by involving us in conversations and experiences alongside the leading researchers and influencers of the global dairy industry.

Throughout the past year, McCabe has been grateful to serve as the GSD vice president and work alongside a team that created new programming to increase student–industry relationships and interactions.

Among the team’s many accomplishments have been the following:

• Securing sponsorships to help lower the costs of graduate student Annual Meeting attendance
• Creation of multiple podcast episodes via ADSA and industry partners to uplift GSD contest winners’ research
• Collaborating with ARPAS leadership to develop a first-of-its-kind mentorship program between graduate students and animal science professionals

In his year as president, McCabe is looking to make the GSD experience more accessible and more streamlined, and to build upon industry partnerships to further the professional and personal development of future dairy scientists. From his own experience, he knows what it can be like to go into your first ADSA Annual Meeting, and he entertains any opportunity for anyone to become more involved in ADSA.

Yufeng “Evelyn” Lin is a PhD student at North Carolina State University, studying food chemistry under the advisement of Haotian Zheng, PhD.

Lin was studying nutrition science as an undergraduate and continued as a master’s degree in food science student at North Carolina State University. However, her passion for food and human health never changed. An undergraduate background in nutrition has given her a different perspective from other food scientists. Her internship at the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education program gave her a dietitian’s perspective on the different needs of diverse populations for dairy products. Now, her research focuses on the construction of food structure through novel techniques, such as small‐angle X‐ray analysis and small‐ and large‐amplitude oscillatory shear rheology. She will continue working as a food scientist to explore the use of dairy products and improve the absorption and digestion of nutrients in dairy beverages.

Last year was her first time attending the ADSA Annual meeting, and she was able to show her efforts in and contribution to the dairy field. Her work on “Understanding the relationships between interfacial behavior of dairy protein ingredients and characteristics of oil‐in‐water emulsion droplets” won first place in the Dairy Foods Division oral competition. She was very excited about this and was also impressed by the contributions of various fields to the dairy industry. Thanks to ADSA, Lin not only had the opportunity to interact with researchers in different disciplines to enhance her academic abilities but also had a comprehensive understanding of trends and changes in the dairy industry. Although, unfortunately, she will not be able to attend this year’s conference in Canada, she remains engrossed in the world of dairy research with ADSA. She hopes to advance the dairy industry and strengthen the connection between graduate students and association partners during her two‐year term as vice president and president at ADSA GSD. Lin is also looking forward to organizing more events and seminars to provide academic and career guidance to graduate students in return for the help ADSA has given her.

Madi Bacon is a PhD candidate in the Department of Animal Science at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, supervised by Bradley Heins and Marcia Endres. She is committed to enhancing collaboration and communication among graduate students in the dairy industry, and is eager to contribute to the growth and success of the ADSA graduate student community.

Bacon began her academic journey at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire where she earned a BA in psychology and participated in undergraduate research aiming to enhance the adoptability of shelter dogs. She then continued for her MS in applied animal behavior and welfare at the University of Edinburgh, where she studied elephant social networks in European zoos and their impact on reproduction. Her current research focuses on dairy cattle behavior and welfare, addressing the short- and long-term impacts of disbudding. Through her PhD research, she has gained invaluable insights into the complexities of the dairy sector and is determined to apply this knowledge for the betterment of the ADSA GSD.

Although she had not worked with dairy cattle prior to beginning her PhD, Bacon quickly developed an enduring passion for dairy science and has actively engaged with ADSA and other organizations to promote dairy cattle welfare. She has actively participated in multiple ADSA meetings and Discover Conferences, including two oral presentations at last year’s annual meeting in Kansas City. These events have provided valuable opportunities for networking, knowledge sharing, and professional growth.

Beyond ADSA, Bacon has experience serving on multiple committees in her department, college, and professional organizations. Most recently, she was elected as the representative of the animal science department graduate students for the college’s Graduate Student Board. These opportunities have given her firsthand experience of the unique challenges faced by graduate students and has fueled her passion to advocate for their needs and concerns.

If elected as secretary, Bacon is committed to amplifying the voices of graduate students within the ADSA Graduate Student Division. She aims to establish open lines of communication, ensuring that the concerns, ideas, and achievements of fellow graduate students are recognized and shared. She believes that by fostering a collaborative and inclusive environment, the ADSA GSD can serve as a catalyst for innovation and growth within the dairy industry.

As someone who is deeply invested in the dairy industry and in particular dairy cattle welfare, Bacon possesses the enthusiasm, drive, and commitment needed to excel in the role of secretary. Her genuine desire to support fellow graduate students and foster a sense of community makes her an ideal candidate for this position.

Guadalupe Ceja is a second-year PhD student under Courtney Daigle at Texas A&M University. Growing up on a hobby farm in South Texas, Ceja became skilled in raising various species of livestock. To diversify her knowledge about animals, she moved across the country to receive an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Pennsylvania with the intention of becoming a veterinarian. It was here where she gained her first research experience by running her own research project in the field of canine immunology and neurobiology. After spending countless hours in the laboratory and finding her passion for research, she was selected to attend Virginia Tech as an National Institutes of Health–funded postbaccalaureate student so that she could further explore life as a researcher. At Virginia Tech, she assisted in research projects involving horses and dairy cows and ran her own project focused on infection and immune responses using house finches as an animal model.

To put her diverse research skills into practice on a topic of great interest to her, she joined the USDA group at Purdue University to work on a master’s degree in animal science. It was during her master’s program that she fell feet first into the dairy industry by connecting with industry specialists in the Midwest, collaborating with dairy experts, and attending various conferences. Even though her thesis work focused on health, physiological stress, disease, and behavior in dairy calves, she gained a lot of interest on how those parameters can be evaluated to improve cow welfare. Currently, Ceja is an Aggie doctoral student performing research that focuses on dairy cow welfare with a special emphasis on heat stress and automatic milking systems. Additionally, she is pursuing an Extension Certificate at Texas A&M where she plans on expanding her knowledge about resources available to Spanish-speaking dairy workers in the United States to better understand how we can strengthen the relationship between managers and workers.

The ADSA is a multidisciplinary hub for dairy research development and circulation and serves as a key resource for graduate students who want to develop professionally and connect with highly respected researchers and dairy professionals on a local, national, and international level. Since Ceja is on the early end of her professional career in the dairy industry, she wants to continue strengthening her connections with other graduate students who are also working to contribute to the dairy industry. Ceja has developed her finance and budgeting skills serving as a treasurer for multiple campus organizations, and she hopes to apply that knowledge serving as a treasurer for the GSD. Additionally, she hopes to share her passion for dairy cattle welfare with others and work to increase involvement in the ADSA GSD so that other students can share their passions.

Bailey Gong is a third‐year PhD student in food science at Cornell University under the guidance of Carmen Moraru, PhD. Although he entered the program as an MS student in the same lab, he soon transferred to a PhD program after igniting a greater curiosity for research and wanting to answer more questions during his graduate school career. His research area is in dairy processing, and his main work focuses on microwave vacuum‐drying of cheese. Specifically, he is investigating how process parameters and cheese material properties affect the drying and puffing behaviors and final product characteristics of microwave vacuum‐dried cheese snacks. He hopes that his research will benefit the dairy industry by demystifying microwave vacuum‐dried cheese snacks and streamlining the product‐development process to increase consumer access to healthier, crunchy snacks.

Before coming to Cornell, Bailey earned his BS in mechanical engineering from California State University, Fresno. After minoring in food science as an undergraduate, Gong realized that a unique opportunity lay before him. Born and raised in the San Joaquin Valley of California, one of the world’s top agriculture‐producing regions, Gong was inspired at a young age to join the dairy industry and contribute to increasing the safety, quality, and accessibility of dairy foods. Upon completing his graduate degree, he aspires to use his food science and engineering education to design food processes and processing equipment in the dairy industry. Gong hopes to serve ADSA GSD as the Dairy Foods Director to help other scientists in the Dairy Foods Division network, share research ideas, and promote interest in Dairy Foods within the ADSA GSD. In this position, he also hopes to increase his exposure to a wider variety of dairy foods research while listening to and acting upon the needs of other members of the Dairy Foods Division.

Mariana Nehme Marinho is a second-year PhD student in the Department of Animal Science, University of Florida. Her interest in farm animals became an integral part of her life when she was very young as she spent time at her family’s dairy farm. Years later, she started her bachelor’s degree program in veterinary medicine in Brazil. She joined the dairy nutrition research group and the university’s junior enterprise. For three years she had a daily routine with the research group to perform the daily activities involved in different research projects. She left Brazil and came to the United States to complete a senior year internship in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Florida.

The amazing experience she had as an intern at the University of Florida led her to apply to the MS program under the leadership of Santos and Francisco Peñagaricano, whom she was very fortunate to have as mentors. The work she conducted during her program has already generated important results. She published two articles in high impact journals about a novel topic on feed efficiency in dairy cattle, which can have a remarkable impact on the dairy industry. She completed her MS program early in 2021 and immediately afterward was accepted in the PhD program, also at University of Florida. Her goal for the graduate program, both MS and PhD, is to elucidate and understand some of the cellular mechanisms that underlie differences in the ability of cows to convert feed nutrients into edible animal products. Her research clearly showed that residual feed intake, an important measure of feed efficiency, calculated after adjusting for milk energy output and body energy changes, is not associated with risk of postpartum diseases or survival of cows. Her second project showed that more feed efficient cows had reduced dry matter intake but no impact on energy output in milk or mobilized body tissue. Additionally, most efficient cows also had improved reproductive performance compared with least efficient cows. Finally, her last project investigates the potential mechanisms associated with feed efficiency by measuring total tract digestibility, ruminal parameters, behavior, and hepatic mitochondrial respiration coupled with ATP synthesis as well as to quantify mRNA expression for genes involved in hepatic energy metabolism. Her next experiment will use genomic merit for feed efficiency to select diverging groups of cows for a proof-of-concept experiment. The rumen content of those two groups of RFI will be swapped to evaluate the changes in digestibility, production, and RFI as the microbiomes are exchanged to understand the contributions from the host versus the contributions from the rumen microbiota to digestion and efficiency. Thus, by understanding the challenges coming from different scenarios, she believes she can make contributions as a GSD production director on the ADSA board.