Academics

Penn State professor named Poultry Science Association Fellow

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Robert Elkin, professor of avian nutritional biochemistry in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, has been selected as a Poultry Science Association Fellow, the highest recognition the association bestows upon a member.

He will be honored formally at the Poultry Science Association’s annual meeting in Montréal, Québec, Canada, July 15-18.

This honor is awarded to those members who have achieved significant professional distinction and who have provided significant contributions to the field of poultry science. Two others will be recognized at the meeting: Richard Gast, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, and E. David Peebles III, of Mississippi State University.

Elkin deserves this prestigious recognition, according to Terry Etherton, head of Penn State's Department of Animal Science.

"Being named a fellow demonstrates his stature in the poultry industry, both nationally and internationally, and his many outstanding contributions to the industry and to our department,” he said.

Robert Elkin, professor of avian nutritional biochemistry in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, has been selected as a Poultry Science Association Fellow. Credit: Michael Houtz / Penn StateCreative Commons

Elkin expressed gratitude for the Poultry Science Association recognition.

"It is humbling to now be included among this special group of individuals, many of whom I have known and greatly admired during my career,” he said.

A native of New Jersey, Elkin received a bachelor’s degree in animal science from Penn State in 1975. He earned a master’s degree in nonruminant nutrition in 1977 and a doctorate in nutritional biochemistry in 1981, both from Purdue University. He joined the faculty of the Department of Animal Sciences at Purdue in 1981 as an assistant professor and rose through the ranks to associate professor and professor.

In 1999, he was appointed head of the Department of Poultry Science at Penn State and served in that capacity until 2012, when the department was merged into the Department of Animal Science.

In addition to his research and teaching responsibilities, Elkin serves as director of the graduate program in animal science and is coordinator of the poultry and avian science undergraduate minor.

Elkin’s research program has spanned several areas, including avian amino acid nutrition, metabolism, and analysis; utilization of high-tannin grain sorghum by poultry; nutritional/pharmacological reduction of egg cholesterol content; and, most recently, novel dietary approaches to enrich eggs and poultry meat with heart-healthy, very long-chain omega-3 fatty acids.

He is the author or co-author of 68 articles that have been published in 23 different refereed journals, 55 published abstracts, four book chapters and 13 conference proceedings papers, and he holds one U.S. patent.

A member of the Poultry Science Association since 1976, Elkin’s most extensive service to the association has been in the area of journal editing and reviewing, serving as an associate editor of Poultry Science for 17 years, as a metabolism and nutrition section co-editor of Poultry Science for 11 years, and as a nutrition subject co-editor of the Journal of Applied Poultry Research for three years.

Currently he is an associate editor of lipids and serves on the editorial advisory board of Animal Feed Science and Technology. In addition, Elkin has been an ad hoc reviewer of 190 manuscripts for 56 other journals.

Elkin has received the Poultry Science Association American Egg Board Research Award (1991), the American Feed Industry Association Nutrition Research Award (1997), a Fulbright Scholar Research Award (Austria, 1992-93), and an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Research Fellowship (Austria, 1995).

In 2017, he was appointed as a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee that currently is preparing the 10th revised edition of the Nutrient Requirements of Poultry report, a publication that is deemed the global "gold standard" of poultry nutrition information for academia, government and industry.

Last Updated June 26, 2019

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