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WHO, WHAT,
WHEN, WHERE

• Notables
• Grants
• Articles Published
• New Projects
• New Publications

HEADLINES

• Division of Agriculture Field Days

• Yanbin Li named to Tyson Chair in Biosensing Engineering

• New headquarters for Fruit Substation and SEBS

• Jim Moore named to ASHS Hall of Fame; Navaho named Outstanding Cultivar

• New York Times reports on Arkansas blackberries

• Poultry youth campers develop new products

• Belize team to receive Faculty-Student Collaboration Award

• Delta Classic raises scholarship funds

• Animal Science student is Bodenhamer Fellow

• Carver program provides taste of graduate school

• Don Herring retires as AEED head

• Bentley joins Division administrative team

• Bees removed from Old Main tower, put to work at AAREC

• Maxwell receives Animal Management Award

• SWCS presents best paper award to Sharpley

• Terry Siebenmorgen receives food engineering award

• ADA names Foote 'Outstanding Dietetics Educator'

• Communications projects win national awards

• Faculty members attend teaching camp

• 4-H O'Rama comes to campus

• KC Kauffman Scholars visit Bumpers College

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Vision is published six times a year by the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station in the U of A System's Division of Agriculture and by the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences. It is produced by the Communication Services unit of the Department of Agricultural and Extension Education, 110 Agriculture Building, U of A, Fayetteville, AR 72701. 479-575-5647.

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Yanbin Li named to Tyson Chair in Biosensing Engineering

Yanbin Li with a prototype of a portable biosensor system for field use to rapidly detect the H5N1 bird flu virus in poultry.

Dean Greg Weidemann announced July 11 that Professor Yanbin Li has been named to the Tyson Endowed Chair in Biosensing Engineering.

Li is one of the world's leading scientists in the development of biosensing technology for food safety and quality applications, Weidemann said in an announcement in the atrium of the Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences Building.

He has developed a prototype portable biosensor system that can detect the H5N1 avian influenza virus in poultry samples in less than one hour at an estimated cost of less than $10 per sample. H5N1 is the "bird flu" virus that has been transmitted from poultry to humans in more than 300 cases in Asia, Africa and Europe.

A $1.5 million endowment for the new chair was provided by the Tyson Foods Foundation from a gift announced in May 2005 and the UA Matching Gift Program previously endowed by the Walton Family Charitable Trust, Weidemann said. Investment earnings from the endowment will help support Li's research in the department of biological and agricultural engineering and the Center of Excellence for Poultry Science, which is a unit of the University of Arkansas System's Division of Agriculture.

Li is principal investigator on a recent grant of $375,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Research Initiative to refine and test the H5N1 biosensor system. Co-investigators are Billy Hargis, Steve Tung and Ronghui Wang at University of Arkansas and Luc Burghman at Texas A&M University.

Mark Cochran, associate vice president for research in the Division of Agriculture, said the patent-pending H5N1 biosensor system would be much faster, more reliable, easier and cheaper than currently available tests, which are either poor in specificity, low in sensitivity, time consuming, expensive, or require a laboratory and a highly trained technician.

In other research, Li has been the lead scientist in developing systems using nanoparticles and biosensors for rapid detection of pathogenic bacteria in food products. He also has developed risk-assessment models for pathogens in food processing and methods of killing bacteria during poultry processing.

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