As the world battles to find ways to feed its entire population, two ISU students used their knowledge and skill to aid the fight.

Rachael Cox, sophomore in agronomy, and Emma Flemmig, sophomore in genetics, were presented with awards at the 2006 World Food Prize International Symposium in Des Moines.

Cox received the John Chrystal Intern Award and Flemmig received the Ahmanson Intern Award. Both received their awards for work as Borlaug-Ruan International Interns during the summer of 2005.

The World Food Prize Youth Institute, which is held in conjunction with the World Food Prize International Symposium, is a prerequisite of the awards Cox and Flemmig received.

Lisa Fleming, director of youth and education programs for the World Food Prize Foundation, said the institute was designed to get students interested in world hunger and to inform youth of career options in this field.

“Mr. John Ruan and Dr. Borlaug wanted to give students some awareness of potential professions that they can prepare for in college that are food and agriculture related,” Fleming said.

The Youth Institute gives students an opportunity to interact with Nobel and World Food Prize recipients and exposes them to an array of experts, facilities and organizations related to food security.

Students who attend the Youth Institute are asked to prepare discussion papers that relate to the topic of the Symposium and present them to a panel of World Food Prize Council of Advisors and Laureates.

“The students give overviews of their papers for two hours with these renowned individuals,” Fleming said.

Participants in the institute then fill out an application to participate in the Borlaug-Ruan International Internship Program.

Those who are selected get to travel abroad and get a first-hand view of real and pressing food security issues and nutritional problems in poverty-stricken areas. Cox and Flemmig were two of 13 selected to travel abroad.

Cox traveled to Kenya to conduct research on an insect that fed on Kenyan crops that had developed a resistance to pesticides. In doing this, she became familiar with the local culture of Kenya.

“I got to learn more about their culture by going to the rural part of Kenya, which was great,” Cox said.

“I loved the people. They lived in poverty, but they were so generous and they were happy to ask me questions and watch me do my research.”

The United States has a warning against traveling to Kenya. Still, Cox said she was excited to go because it was a major goal of hers to travel to Africa.

“I was naive about it because I had been wanting to go to Africa for quite some time. I had to live in a barbed-wire-enclosed compound with security guards, and I think the reality of the situation hit me while I was there, but I went back last summer because I loved it so much,” Cox said.

Flemmig, who traveled to Mexico, worked on research of genetically modified crops.

“Basically what we were trying to do was find wheat and corn lines that were easy to genetically modify. So they had taken easily modified crops and added a gene for disease resistance, and I evaluated the disease resistance,” Flemmig said.

During her evaluation of the crop, Flemmig confirmed the gene was effective.

“It produced more disease resistance. My boss had a grad student work on it before I did, and he thought that the student had made all the data up, so he had me double check it. And I found the same results. It was almost too good to be true,” Flemmig said.

Although it felt good to get recognition, she said everyone who participated deserved to win.

“Out of the 13 interns, everyone did a really good job and worked really hard, and tried to make the most of their experience,” Flemmig said.

It was rewarding, Cox said, to speak with the well-known attendees of the Symposium about what experiences they had during their internship.

“Very prestigious people read all of the interns’ papers, and for them to come up to you and say, ‘I read your paper and I thought it was great,’ that made me feel proud of the work I had done,” Cox said.