ARKANSAS: USDA Awards $300,000 Research Grant
University of Arkansas professor Karthik Nayani was awarded a nearly $300,000 grant by the USDA to create a method for detecting heat stress in poultry using an approach that could be applied to other animals raised for meat. Nayani's research will create detailed images of the animals' red blood cells, which can then be analyzed with neural networks to find molecular details associated with heat stress.
"Interfacing soft objects, such as cells, with functional materials, like liquid crystals, is a key theme in my lab," Nayani said. "Imaging liquid crystals with red blood cells within them provides feature-rich images well suited for classification with neural networks to reveal hidden connections. The goal of this work is to determine if certain features in these images can be connected to molecular signatures of heat stress."