On Saturday, September 18th faculty, staff, and graduate students participated in the highly successful 2016 Entomology Retreat. Talks, discussions, and delicious food were shared by all attendees and the overall consensus was that our retreat was a grand time. One of the highlights was the distribution of the Departmental Awards. If you were unable to attend the retreat, be sure to congratulate the following folks on their achievements:

Steinhauer Award
Jessica Grant
Gussie MacCracken

Teaching Achievement Award
Rebecca Eckert
Jonathan Wang
Rebecca Wilson

Great work, guys! We are so lucky to have you as part of our entomology family.

Brian Lovett (St. Leger Lab) was featured today on the BioMed Central Blog as part of World Malaria Day for the work that won him the Fungal Biology and Biotechnology Student Prize at the European Conference on Fungal Genetics in Paris in early April. 

Check out the complete blog post here!

Brian has had a productive Spring semester overall, including talks, workshops, and posters in both Paris and Burkina Faso:

• A poster presentation entitled “Applying Transgenic Fungi In a MosquitoSphere” at the European Conference on Fungal Genetics in Paris, France on 5 April 2016.
• A talk entitled “The Dual Lifestyles of Metarhizium” at the Clavicipitaceae Workshop of the European Conference on Fungal Genetics in Paris, France on 3 April 2016.
• A two-day workshop entitled “Quality In, Quality Out- Statistics In R” at the Centre Muraz in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso on 1-2 March 2015.
• A talk entitled “Using GM Fungi to Prevent Malaria Transmission” at the Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Sante in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso on 29 February 2016.

Keep up the great work Brian!

Graduate student, Jonathan Wang, advised by Dr. Raymond St. Leger received the 1st place presentation award at the Society of Invertebrate Pathology 48th Annual Meeting held August 9-13, 2015 for his talk entitled " A Genome Wide Association Study of Resistance to Metarhizium anisopliae.

Congratulations to Dr. Margaret Palmer for being named 2015 Distinguished University Professor, the university's highest academic honor!

Congratulations to Dr. Raymond St. Leger who has been named as the recipient of the Kirwan Faculty Research and Scholarship Prize for 2015 by President Loh.  The Kirwan Prize for 2015 recognizes Dr. St. Leger's accomplishments in the areas of biomedical research and agriculture and his work in genetic engineering techniques that develop new and more effective and environmentally safe technologies for controlling insect agricultural pests and vectors of important human diseases. 

Grad student, Britanny West (Advisor Maile Neele), has been awarded a 2015 Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship from SeaGrant that will start in February of 2015. These competitive fellowships are awarded to applicatns who have an interest in ocean, coastal and Great Lakes resources and in the national policy decisions affecting those resources.