Dr. Dong Yong Kil is one of many scholars who has studied in the Stein Monogastric Nutrition Laboratory over the years. On a recent visit, he spoke about his career studying animal nutrition.

Tell us a little about yourself: who you are, how you came to decide to study animal sciences, how you came to the University of Illinois and the Stein lab.

My name is Dong Yong Kil, and I used to work with Dr. Stein as a Ph. D student. Originally, I came from South Korea, and then I met Dr. Stein when he had a chance to visit Korea. We talked a lot about pig nutrition, and he liked me, and I also liked him, so he accepted me as a grad student at South Dakota State University when Dr. Stein was a professor there. However, he got a job opportunity at the University of Illinois, so I moved to Illinois from South Dakota with him, and then I spent around three and a half years at Illinois to complete my Ph. D. degree. After graduation, I moved to Dr. Fahey and Dr. Swanson's lab to work with companion animal nutrition and genomics. Now I have a job in my country as the assistant professor at the Chung-Ang University, and I'm currently teaching my students and doing some research work. However, now I'm working with poultry instead of swine, even though my Ph. D. came out of the swine work. But it's a very interesting animal, and I can bring all my knowledge from my swine background to the poultry nutrition part, so it's very challenging but very interesting and I love to work with the poultry now.

What did you study for your doctorate?

The topic of my dissertation was "Digestibility and energetic utilization of lipids by pigs." So mostly I measured the apparent and then true digestibility of dietary fat fed to pigs. My main topic was net energy, because the swine industry in North America when I was a grad student, was very interested in the net energy system. So I did many experiments related to the net energy of the diet with a variety of ingredients – corn, soybean oil, soybeans. That experiment was very big, and we all worked together from the University of Illinois, Iowa State University, and the Prairie Swine Center in Canada. We all worked together, and then I collected all the data and analyzed it and published a paper. That was my main job when I was a Ph. D. student.

Now, you work as an assistant professor. Tell us about that job.

Last semester, I taught the basic animal nutrition class and laboratory and also the graduate level biochemistry class. For the coming semester [Spring 2012], I'm going to teach biochemistry for the undergrad students and then feed science and technology. And then probably the following semester I'm going to teach swine science and poultry science. Those are the class components of my responsibility. And I'm doing some of the poultry experiments regarding dietary supplements to improve the productivity and health of the poultry. I'm also still very closely working with Dr. Stein and another professor in Korea named Beob Kim, who used to work with Dr. Stein as a postdoc.

What does your typical day consist of?

A typical day is teaching, meeting with students, writing papers, and I have a lab meeting like Dr. Stein with my grad students. I also have a lot of meetings with professors in my department, and sometimes I meet with industry people to talk about what is the future of poultry nutrition. And that is actually my official day. And then I still like to play with my daughters and see my wife. So after school, I just go back to my home around 9 or 10 o'clock at night. It does not change much, in my day.

The knowledge and the skills that you gained while getting your degrees in animal sciences obviously carry over a great deal to the work that you're doing now.

Yes. It helped me a lot, actually. I took very good courses at the U of I, and that helped me a lot to teach my students and to prepare my classes. Then many of the research skills like analyzing data or conducting experiments -- I learned many things from the U of I working with Dr. Stein. So I try to adapt that kind of skill to my research program and teaching program, and then I also try to develop the more advanced technology in my lab. I learned many things, and then I'm very glad to be here.

Is there anything that you would like to tell people who may be considering a major or a career in animal sciences?

I'm not quite sure about the situation in America, but in my country, I always say to my students that there are big opportunities for the students who want to study animal science. If you studied animal nutrition, you will have a very big chance to get into the industry. Everybody knows many people in the world are still hungry. We need to find more food, we need to produce animals more economically, more efficiently. We are a little bit short of food and have shortages of corn and many grains. So there are a lot of places we need to do more research. So I think there are big opportunities for everybody.