Dr. Richard S. Gates serves as the Director of the Egg Industry Center. He holds the Iowa Egg Council Endowed Professorship and has appointments in the departments of agricultural and biological engineering and animal science at Iowa State University.
Prior to his appointment as director, Gates was a faculty member at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign since 2008. His research has focused on controlled environment systems in agriculture, with an emphasis on biological and physiological responses and interactions between animals and the environment. He also has studied animal welfare, precision livestock farming and post-harvest loss measurements. His extension work has focused on the application of research to air emissions and their mitigation, odor and siting issues, livestock environmental control systems, and livestock heat stress reduction.
Gates also served 24 years on the faculty of the University of Kentucky’s Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, including five years as department chair. Gates is a fellow of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineering and a member of the Poultry Science Association. He earned his bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering at the University of Minnesota and a master’s degree in agricultural engineering and a doctorate in biological engineering, both from Cornell University.
