The National Animal Nutrition Program (NANP) was established in 2010 as a National Research Support Project (NRSP-9). This program is supported by the Agricultural Experiment Stations and funded with Hatch Funds provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food & Agriculture (NIFA).

For the past five years, NANP has focused on an integrated and systematic approach to sharing, collecting, assembling, synthesizing and disseminating science-based information, educational tools and enabling technologies on nutrient needs of beef cattle, dairy cattle, swine and poultry that facilitate high-priority research across these agricultural species.

NANP announced that the program has been renewed for an additional five-year period and it is searching for people to expand the membership of the three NANP committees. In addition to replacing some of the committee members who have served the past five years, experts with nutritional background in equine, small ruminants and aquaculture will be added.

The NANP committees and their functions are as follows:

* Coordinating Animal Nutrition: The function of this group is to oversee and coordinate the competitive process and the work of the feed composition and modeling groups, to advise the National Academies on critical national priorities in animal nutrition, and to provide a forum to address research support needs.

* Feed Composition: The function of this group is to bring together data and research resources in the area of feed composition, to foster communication among those collecting feed composition information and to facilitate efficiencies and consistencies in data collection and maintenance.

* Modeling & Support Technologies: The function of this group is to serve the animal nutrition research community to better use predictive technologies and tools, to best utilize available platforms and to work with researchers in the community to effectively share, combine, manage, manipulate and analyze models and modeling information.

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The search for candidates for membership on the NANP committees is overseen by the program’s administrative advisers. Together, with the project director and USDA national program leader, the administrative advisers will select the committee members. Applicants should keep in mind that selection of committee members will be on a competitive basis.

To help the oversight team assess knowledge and experience, information is requested from those interested in serving as committee members. The material to be submitted should contain the following:

1. A two-page introductory letter. This letter should address the following:

* The reason you are interested in serving on the committee;

* What prompted your interest (e.g., announcement, colleague’s recommendation, word of mouth);

* Specific examples of your qualifications relevant to the committee on which you wish to serve;

* Special skills, strengths and achievements, and

* What you hope to bring to NANP and why you would be an asset.

2. Complete curriculum vitae with current contact information.

3. A letter of recommendation may be included with the application, but is not required.

This information should be submitted electronically to the project leader as a pdf file. Please send the application material to [email protected] by Nov. 15, 2015.

Productive and successful committees are founded on dynamic and energetic group interactions. Thus, committee members are expected to be open to various points of view, bring new ideas and formulate creative approaches to solving grand challenges. Committee membership is generally for a three-year period with the possibility of renewal for a second three-year term.

Limited funds will be available to support committee activities (e.g., travel to meetings), but there will be no funds awarded to individual committee members for specific research. The reason is that NRSPs such as the NANP are intended to focus on development of enabling technologies, support of activities (such as to collect, assemble, store, and distribute materials, resources and information) or the sharing of facilities needed to accomplish high priority research but which itself is not research.

Administrative advisers: Lesley Oliver, Dave Benfield, Cameron Faustman and Bret Hess; USDA/NIFA

National program leader: Charlotte Kirk Baer; NRSP-9 project leader: Gary Cromwell.