Mark D. Hanigan’s formal education includes post-doctoral work in Biochemistry at UC-Davis; a Ph.D. in Nutrition, an M.S. in Animal Science from UC-Davis; and a B.S. in Dairy Science from Iowa State University. Dr. Hanigan joined Virginia Tech as an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Dairy Science in 2005, where he continues to work on nitrogen metabolism and modeling problems. His current research is focused on 3 areas: 1) experimentally characterizing the responses of cellular signaling pathways regulating protein synthesis to individual amino acids, hormonal signals, and cellular energy supply and building a model of that system to refine amino acid requirements for lactating cattle; 2) improving models of nitrogen recycling to the digestive tract with the goal of better defining ruminally degradable protein requirements; and 3) improving our understanding of the regulation of volatile fatty acid production in the rumen with the goal of improving prediction accuracy within current rumen models and better understanding the relationship between ruminal function and methane production. The long-term objective of the work is to improve animal efficiency and reduce the impact of food animal production on the environment.
