DALLAS - Nobel prize winner Dr. Russell Hulse and Dr. Elsa Murano, vice chancellor and dean of agriculture and life sciences and director of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in the Texas A&M University System, were featured speakers at a recent biotechnology conference on food safety. The event was presented at the Texas A&M University System Research and Extension Center in Dallas.

Hulse opened the conference with a talk on "Science: From Nobel to Neighborhoods." He stressed the importance of instilling an excitement about science at an early age.

Hulse spoke on his road to the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1974 he was a 23-year-old graduate student at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, working on his thesis under the direction of Dr. Joseph Taylor Jr. Using a 1,000-foot radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, Hulse discovered the first binary pulsar.

His work took him in an unexpected direction.

"We started out looking for pulsars and ended up proving Einstein's theory of relativity," he said. "That opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation."

In 1993 Hulse and his thesis advisor were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.

Since then, Hulse has become increasingly interested in improving science and math education in the nation's primary and secondary schools, both inside and outside of the classroom.

"For today's kids, I think we need to work harder than ever to instill an interest in science," he said.

Hulse has been a visiting professor of physics, science and mathematics education at the University of Texas at Dallas since January 2004. He has also retained his affiliation with Princeton University, where he is a principal research physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

To close the conference, Dr. Elsa Murano spoke on, "Ensuring Consumer Confidence in the Food/Fiber Supply."

"Agriculture is so much more than the plow and the cow," Murano said. "It's also biotechnology. The new agriculture is very much consumer-driven. They want their food to be safe, healthy, high quality, low cost and for it to not trash the environment."

Agriculture today has three new characteristics, she said. In addition to being consumer-driven, it is also technology-based and globally focused.

Consumer-based means developing food and other agriculture products aimed at satisfying demands, rather than providing products with no regard to needs and wants, she said.

Technology-based agriculture includes biotechnology, computer chips on animals for tracking purposes, satellite technology for row crop planning, nanotechnology for the delivery of drugs in animals, and mathematic modeling to develop high yield farming plans, she said.

The global focus of agriculture can be seen in the exchange of food and fiber products with other countries, Murano said.

Conference attendees participated in break-out seminars on such issues as cloning, biosecurity for food, water and livestock, and genetically engineered plants. Vendors also set up booth displays covering such topics as "The Science of Fat", Experiment Station Food Protection Management Program, and Better Living for Texans.

The conference was a collaborative effort of Collin County Community College, Extension, Experiment Station, University of Texas-Dallas, Region 10 Education Service Center, University of Texas-Southwestern and Texas A&M.