School of Environmental and Rural Science PhD student Katherine Smith has won the Australian Society of Animal Production(ASAP) Prize in Animal Science 2017 from the University of Queensland for best thesis in an area of relevance to livestock.

The prize was awarded on the strength of her Honours research project in ruminant research which Katherine completed as an external University of Queensland student to UNE fulfilling course requirements for the Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree. Entitled “Methane emission, dry matter digestibility and ruminal fermentation of Angus heifers fed sprouted barley fodder and feedlot finisher diets”, her thesis was completed under supervision of Professor Roger Hegarty (ERS), Dr Frances Cowley (ERS) and Professor Dennis Poppi (School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, UQ).

Katherine is currently hard at work on her PhD, which she began in January this year, after being awarded a Commonwealth Research Training Program scholarship as well as a Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) Postgraduate Top-Up scholarship, in the area of ruminant research, again under the supervision of Roger Hegarty (principal) and Fran Cowley.