The Beef Improvement Federation (BIF) presented 2024 Baker/Cundiff Awards to Gabriel Zayas, Ponce, Puerto Rico, and Andrew Lakamp, New Berlin, Illinois, June 10 during the group’s annual symposium in Knoxville, Tennessee.
The annual Frank Baker/Larry Cundiff Beef Improvement Essay Contest for graduate students provides an opportunity to recognize outstanding student research and competitive writing in honor of Frank Baker and Larry Cundiff.
Zayas is working on his doctorate at the University of Florida. His essay was titled “Advancing Genetic Improvement in Beef Cattle: Leveraging Genomics for Improved Heterosis Analysis and Utilization.”
Lakamp is working on his doctorate at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. His essay was titled “Breeding for the Little Things: A Look at Including Microbiome Information in Animal Breeding.”
Winning essays are published in the annual BIF Research Symposium and Annual Meeting Proceedings, which are produced after the event and posted to the BIF website, BIFSymposium.com. Zayas and Lakamp will each receive a $2,500 scholarship.
Baker is widely recognized as the “founding father” of BIF. He played a key leadership role in helping establish BIF in 1968 while he was chairman of the department of animal science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Cundiff retired after 40 years as a research geneticist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service. He was the research leader of the genetics and breeding research unit at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center from 1976 until 2005. Cundiff not only designed, conducted and published some of the most important beef breeding research of the 20th century, but also led in the transfer of new technology to the beef industry through his continued work with BIF and in presentations made across the nation and around the world.
Approximately 500 beef producers, academia and industry representatives attended the organization’s 56th Annual Research Symposium and Convention. BIF’s mission is to help improve the industry by promoting greater acceptance of beef cattle performance evaluation.
For more information about this year’s symposium, including additional award winners and coverage of the meeting and tour, visit BIFSymposium.com.