PPILOW’s People: Yegor Kozhemyakin!

Research as part of a PPILOW project is definitely not easy. On the one hand it is constant and painstaking work on part of a huge project and as part of a huge team working on improving the life cycle of animals in agro-industries such as poultry and pigs, on the other hand it is a challenge for me personally. Being a radiophysicist with my main speciality, during my work I interact with experts in chemistry, microbiology, biology and physics, which undoubtedly forces me to open up new horizons in science, which I fall more and more in love with every day. The various scientific fields are closely intertwined and represent a single multifaceted and living organism that is as fascinating as it is immense. That is exactly what I experienced when I worked on the PPILOW project. Based at the LAAS laboratory in the beautiful city of Toulouse in the south of France, our team has been studying the interaction of radio waves with the components that make up an egg of a hen, including the different stages of the embryo’s incubation period if the egg is fertilized. Thanks to this, we are moving towards determining the sex of the embryo during its earliest days of development by means of radio spectroscopy. The results of our work will ultimately reduce the price of egg production substantially by significantly increasing the number of eggs produced per unit time and, as one of the underlying motivations for the research being carried out in this direction, improve and increase the life cycle of hens. The results obtained during the research leave me in no doubt that our team is working in the right direction and that the goal will be achieved. What else could it be? After all, our team is made up of people who are passionate and genuinely committed to their work. Being part of a huge scientific project such as PPILOW, investing my potential and energy in it is not just a job for me, but an important vocation at this stage of my scientific life.