Graduate Student Sandra Mendiola has been selected to participate in the second class of the Entomological Society of America (ESA) Professional Advancement Career Training (PACT) Initiative. The program helps participants develop and hone your non-technical and leadership skills in a variety of areas. This is a great opportunity for Sandra and a wonderful initiative by the ESA.
The Population Biology, Ecology and Evolution (PBEE) graduate program 2022 NCAA basketball tournament challenge winners were Jacoby Robinson for the men’s tournament and Levi Morran for the women’s tournament.
Graduate student Sandra Mendiola received a fellowship from the United States Department of Agriculture to support her research on how symbionts influence the ability of squash bugs to vector plant pathogens. Congrats, Sandra!
Congratulations to grad student Sandra Mendiola for winning the Biology Graduate Award. This award recognizes her record of both scholarship and service to the Department, the Population Biology, Ecology and Evolution program, and Emory as a whole.
This semester, I had the pleasure of teaching an in person, Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE). My students were amazingly dedicated and we managed to enjoy the company and camaraderie during this unusual semester. For all of my students, this was their only in person course.
Postdoc Scott Villa tried to blend in amongst the insects in his incubator today, wearing a monarch inspired mask. Unfortunately, the squash bugs were not fooled.
Scott works both in the de Roode lab, studying sexual selection in monarch butterflies and in the Gerardo lab, studying hybridization and speciation in squash bugs. Sometimes, he gets confused and mixes the two together.
Zoom Science. Undergrads Syneja and Whitney meet with Scott, their summer research mentor.
After an unprecedented COVID-quarantine finish, Erica Harris, through the power of ZOOM, successfully defended her PhD thesis on the influence of gut microbes on monarch butterfly parasite resistance. Throughout her graduate career, Erica mentored numerous undergraduates in our lab and in the lab of her co-advisor, Jaap de Roode. She has also mentored students through such programs as ESA-SEEDs, which supports the mentoring of students from diverse backgrounds who are interested in ecology. In recognition of her commitment to mentoring, Erica received the Laney Graduate School Eleanore Main Student Mentor Award. Erica will continue her science career through a combined research-teaching postdoc at Spelman University.
Note from former graduate student Kim Hoang to Erica upon her successful defense.
Kim Hoang’s NSF postdoctoral fellowship grant was recommended for funding. This fellowship will fund research with Kayla King at Oxford University. Upon leaving Oxford, Kim will return to the US, where she will continue her research and hopes to continue with working with the amazing students at the Global Village Project.
Congrats, Kim!