The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research Fellows, the FFAR Fellows, are 83 PhD students from 30 universities across the U.S. and Canada studying agronomy, food science, genomics, biosystems engineering, and a dozen other fields in agriculture and the life sciences.

What brings these graduate students together? The desire to work with others to address the grand challenges in food and agriculture while building the teamwork, leadership, and change-making skills needed to meet those challenges. The annual FFAR Fellows Lightning Talk Competition is a way for fellows to create and practice their science communication skills in a supportive peer-mentorship environment, and then share their talks with the public.

A committee of science professionals selected the first and second place winners in the competition. The People’s Choice Award was decided via an online vote by the public.

To learn more about the FFAR Fellows, funded by the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and industry and other sponsors, and managed by the College of Agriculture and Life Science at NC State University, explore our website FFARFellows.org and follow us on social (see links at the top of the page).