Awards Information
We are pleased to announce the 2024 Birth Award winner - Professor Roumiana Tsenkova. Roumiana Tsenkova has pioneered the area of non-invasive disease diagnosis (mammary gland inflammation) using near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and multivariate analysis. R. Tsenkova is the founder of a new “omics” discipline called Aquaphotomics. In 2005, she discovered water absorbance bands and spectral patterns specific for biological and aqueous systems and proposed to build up a database called aquaphotome to be further used for diagnosis, quantification and functional characterization on a system level discovering the phenomena of water being a collective mirror of matter and energy. Roumiana Tsenkova has written more than 20 chapters in books, 120 peer reviewed papers and 17 patent applications. The total number of citations of her work exceeds 4900. R. Tsenkova has been a Principal Investigator for more than 21 projects. She is the recipient of the Japanese Near Infrared Society Award for 1998 and the Tomas Hirschfeld International Near Infrared Spectroscopy Award for 2006. Tsenkova has been a keynote speaker at a number of national and international conferences, including the UN 2023 Water Conference in New York, organized by United Nations. R. Tsenkova is the Founder and the Chairman of the International Society of Aquaphotomics and the International Conference of Aquaphotomics.
The CNIRS is pleased to announce that David McIntosh is the recipient of the 2024 CNIRS Young Scientist Award sponsored by Avian Technologies. This honor recognizes his outstanding contributions to near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and his commitment to enhancing the accuracy of NIRS predictions. Since joining the Department of Plant Sciences in 2007, David has made significant advancements in agricultural applications of NIRS. His pioneering work on calibrations for the nutritive content of warm-season grasses has established him as a leader in the field. His doctoral research emphasized improving prediction accuracy through dry matter content analysis.
David is also dedicated to promoting NIRS within the scientific community, actively engaging with the NIRS Consortium and hosting educational workshops. His efforts have significantly advanced the use of NIRS in assessing forage and feed ingredients. We congratulate David on this well-deserved recognition and look forward to his future contributions.