The IOBC-NRS sponsors two Outstanding Graduate Student Awards for students whose contributions are likely to shape the future of the discipline of biological control - one each for PhD (the Robert J. O’Neil Outstanding PhD in Biological Control Award) and MS students. The recipients will be recognized at the IOBC-NRS Informal Conference held at the Annual Entomological Society of America meeting and each will receive a cash award ($300 for PhD and $200 for MS). The PhD winner presents the lead talk in the IOBC-NRS symposium.
All individuals who are enrolled in a graduate program in North America or Bermuda, and are members of IOBC NRS at the time of the application deadline are eligible. We note that students may join the society at the time of submitting their application. Please indicate whether you plan to attend the ESA meeting in November; students who are not planning to attend the Entomological Society of America Meetings would ordinarily be less likely to be considered for the award. Although all students are welcome to apply, experience has shown that more advanced students have tended to rank higher than students just beginning a project; this is most relevant for the PhD award, though we recognize MS students will not have a significant record at the time of application. Students should be enrolled in the appropriate category (MS or PhD) at the time of application.
Students should send: a letter that details the significance of their research and its relevance to biological control; a CV that includes contact information; and the names of two referees who will provide letters of support. Criteria (and relative ranking) to be assessed are: publications (15 pts), presentations (15 pts), outreach activities (15 pts), teaching (15 pts), grantsmanship (15 pts), current and future contributions to biological control (15 pts), and letters of support (10 pts). Application materials and questions should be sent electronically to Doug Landis landisd@msu.edu. Application deadline is May 30, 2010.
Previous Award Winners
Outstanding MS in Biological Control Award
2008 Thelma Heidel
Thelma Heidel received a joint Bachelors degree in Plant Pathology and Entomology from the University of Wisconsin in 2003. During this time she worked with Dr. Gary Jahn of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) rice stem borer parasitoids as part of a year long internship at the University of the Philippines-Los Baños. When residing in Madison, she worked with Dr. Walt Stevenson as a lab technician in the Plant Pathology Department. In 2004 she took a job with Syngenta Corporation where she worked on the development of products for managing corn pathogens.
Thelma joined Dr. Robert O’Neil’s Biological Control Laboratory at the Department of Entomology of Purdue University in May of 2005. There she assessed the potential non-target effects of a soybean aphid parasitoid on aphid communities in Indiana prairies. In addition to collecting thousands of aphid colonies on a wide variety of plant hosts, she supervised the summer laboratory workers responsible for carrying on Dr. O’Neil’s work as his health declined. Thelma received her MS in May of 2008. In August of 2008 Thelma accepted a 5 year NSF-IGERT Fellowship at the University of Minnesota where she works on risk assessment with Dr. George Heimpel in the Department of Entomology.
2007 Karrie Koch
Karrie A. Koch received her B.S. degree in 2005 from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay in environmental science and biology. In the summer of 2005, she began her M.S. program at the University of Minnesota, majoring in entomology. Currently, she is completing her Master’s degree, under the direction of Dr. David Ragsdale, in the secondary effects of soybean rust fungicides on the beneficial fungi infecting the invasive soybean aphid. She anticipates completing her M.S. in the spring of 2008. Concurrently, she has begun class work for her Ph.D. in entomology, with a minor in invasive species and genotypes, after receiving an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) at the University of Minnesota. Karrie’s research interests include biological control of agricultural pests and for her dissertation research she plans to focus on the role of beneficial fungi in the natural control of the invasive soybean aphid.
2006 Nicholas Schmidt
Nicholas Schmidt, Iowa State University, began his graduate career after completing a B.S. at Luther College, Decorah, IA, where he studied the impact of conservation practices on various insect taxa. During his first field season, Nick saw the potential for conservation practices to improve upon the biological control of soybean aphids. Since then Nick has attacked his research and related projects, and as a result he is a co-author on two peer-reviewed articles and lead author on yet another. Nick will transition to a Ph.D. program in the fall, working with Dr. Lisa Schulte and myself at ISU to employ landscape ecological techniques to quantify the impact of reconstructed tall grass prairies on soybean aphid population dynamics. Nick is also developing a respectable teaching portfolio that reflects his interest in biological control. He has been a teaching assistant for three of the four semesters he has been at ISU. This is notable as there is no requirement for M.S. students to TA. On his own, Nick identified being a TA as an opportunity to overcome a discomfort with public speaking and being in a position of leadership. His students note his infectious interest in entomology and his eagerness to work with them. Furthermore, Nick is now identified as a leader within our department. He is serving as the vice-president and now president of the Entomology Graduate Student Organization at ISU. In summary, Nick has a multi-faceted interest in biological control that makes him an excellent choice for the IOBC award for Outstanding Graduate Student in Biological Control.
Robert J. O’Neil Outstanding PhD in Biological Control Award
2008 Ezra Schwartzberg
Ezra received his B.S. in Environmental and Forest Biology with an Entomology concentration from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He received his M.S. degree in Entomology from the University of Kentucky where he studied the chemical defenses of the ladybird beetle Scymnus louisianae, a predator of the soybean aphid.
For his doctorate, Ezra is studying plant defenses in response to feeding by aphid herbivores. Plant defenses, including the release of airborne volatile chemicals, have been shown to play an important role in attracting natural enemies. Ezra’s current research investigates how aphids manipulate their host plant environment by counteracting defense-related phytohormones and natural enemy-attracting volatiles.
In addition to his dissertation research, Ezra has been very active with the Entomological Society of America where he has served as an integral part of several committees. He has been active in teaching both graduate and undergraduate courses at Penn State and participating in several outreach events throughout Pennsylvania. Ezra received the Kozak Fellowship Award for Public Education from Penn State in 2008.
2007 Mary Gardiner
Ms. Mary Gardiner, PhD candidate in the Department of Entomology at Michigan State University, was named the IOBC-NRS Outstanding Ph.D. Student of 2007. Ms. Gardiner was honored for her work which examines how agricultural landscape structure influences the ecosystem services provided by beneficial insects. The award was presented at the December 2007 meeting of IOBC-NRS in San Diego, CA where she also delivered an invited plenary address.
Directing a team of collaborators in four Midwestern states, Mary discovered that landscape composition strongly influenced the ability of predator communities to control the soybean aphid, a major new invasive pest of soybean that is driving growers to use more pesticides. Her work demonstrates the potential for farmers to manage landscapes to enhance predator communities and reduce the need for pesticide applications. Her work has significant implications for the incorporation of bioenergy crops into agricultural production systems.
The work was funded by a $1.5 M USDA Risk Avoidance and Mitigation (RAMP) grant to MSU and collaborating institutions. MSU PI’s include Douglas Landis, Christina DiFonzo and Michael Brewer of the Department of Entomology, and Scott Swinton, Department of Agricultural Economics.
2006 Alejandro Costamagna
The 2006 IOBC-NRS Outstanding PhD Student Award was presented to Dr. Alejandro Costamagna at the IOBC-NRS Symposium held in conjunction with the ESA National Meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana. Alejandro recently completed his PhD degree with Dr. Doug Landis in the Department of Entomology at Michigan Sate University and is currently a post-doc with Dr. David Ragsdale at the University on Minnesota. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro came to MSU on a Fulbright scholarship to pursue his MS degree where his research addressed the impacts of agricultural landscape structure and host density on biological control of the true armyworm, Pseudaletia unipuncta. For his PhD, Alejandro was awarded a prestigious C.S. Mott Fellowship in Sustainable Agriculture at MSU to study biological control of the invasive soybean aphid (Aphis glycines). Alejandro was an exceptional student maintaining a perfect 4.0 GPA during his entire graduate program and has won many awards for his research presentations. He has published 9 peer-reviewed papers to date with several in high quality cross-over journals like Basic and Applied Ecology and Ecological Applications.
2005 Renée Prasad
Dr. Prasad received her Ph.D. in 2005 from Washington State Uni-versity, where she worked on integrating community ecology — specifically the biological control tactic of the use of beetle banks — into cole crop production, with Dr. William Snyder. Dr. Prasad has been active in outreach to grow-ers, complementing her research. Prior to receiving her degree at Washington State, she received a M.S. at Simon Fraser, and also worked for an IPM consulting company. Dr. Prasad is the author of at least a half-dozen papers and book chapters, has given numerous talks at professional meetings and extension meetings, and was PI or co-PI on a num-ber of grants to support her research. Dr. Prasad is currently working for E.S. Cropconsult, Ltd., in Canada. IOBC-NRS is proud to have such an accomplished student as our Outstanding Student Award winner.
2004 Jana Lee
Jana received her B.S. from the University of California at Berkeley, in Genetics and Cell biology, where she did undergraduate research in plant molecular biology. She then completed a M.S. degree in Entomology at Michigan State University, where she focused on agricultural ecology and biological control in Doug Landis’ laboratory. Her research focused on interactions between habitat management, insecticide use, and abundance of carabid beetles. Jana was among the first to quantify the response of carabids to habitat disturbance. At the University of Minnesota, she completed her Ph.D. in 2004 under the guidance of George Heimpel. Her field- and lab-experiments elucidated the role of floral nectar in influencing the behavior and physiology of insect parasitoids in the field. Her dissertation work provided critical tests of the long-standing hypothesis that increased floral diversity in agricultural habitats leads to improved biological control.
In addition to the IOBC Award, Dr. Lee was awarded both the first-year and last-year graduate fellowships by the University of Minnesota Graduate School, and the Louise Dosdall fellowship (Jana is the only student in the history of the Department of Entomology to be awarded all three of those fellowships), and most recently was awarded the UM College of Agriculture’s Philip C. Hamm Scholarship for Graduate Students in Plant Sciences and related Disciplines.
She has been an author or co-author on six refereed papers, two book chapters and two guides to natural enemies. She is currently employed by the US Forest Service, studying chemical ecology and biological control of invasive forest insects.
2003 Jonathan Lundgren
Jonathan defended his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Illinois in December, 2003, for which his research consisted of assessing risk of feeding on transgenic pollen by the coccinellid predator, Coleomegilla maculata. Jon’s research examined nutrition of pollen for development of C. maculata, rates of pollen consumption in lab and field experiments, effects on development of C. maculata when feeding on different amounts of pollen from corn plants expressing the genes for producing Bt-toxins, and the effects of corn anthesis on prey and pollen feeding by C. maculata.
In addition to his dissertation work, Jonathan has worked on the invasion of an agromyzid leafminer in the Midwest, and is an integral player in a new organic-transition project, examining the roles of carabid predators in organic crop habitats. Jon has also been involved in the IOBC Global GMO Guidelines Project, many outreach activities, and has been one of the members of the University of Illinois debate team for recent ESA meetings.
Prior to his work at Illinois, Jonathan received an undergraduate degree in biology and a M.S. degree in entomology, both from the University of Minnesota. Jonathan also worked as a technician for USDA-APHIS-PPQ.
Dr. Jonathan Lundgren represents IOBC-NRS well as the 2003 Outstanding Graduate Student Award winner. He is currently a post-doc at Illinois, working on a USDA-funded Organic Transition project, looking at the roles of carabids and other predators in organic systems.
2002 Jason Harmon
The 2002 Outstanding Student in Biological Control was awarded to Jason Harmon. Jason was an undergrad in Tony Ives’ lab at the University of Wisconsin, where, among other things, he did a project on the effects of predator vision and prey color in foraging behavior of coccinellids. In his Ph.D. with Dave Andow at the University of Minnesota, he has been looking at the effects of alternate prey on predation of pests by generalist predators in a spatially heterogeneous environment.
Dave Andow says about Jason, "he is one of those rare students whose gift for experimental research has resulted in one productive year building logically on each previous productive year. It is not that he is immune from making mistakes; rather he has the remarkable ability to turn mistakes into productive insights without losing any time." Jason’s research effort promises to improve the predictability of generalist predator’s response to prey populations in a complex environment. Jason was awarded the EPA Star Fellowship, and ESA oral student presentation award, and has already been active in service and teaching at the University of Minnesota. Jason delivered an excellent presentation on “The ecological mechanisms of shared predation” to lead off the IOBC Informal Conference Symposium.
2002 Runner-up Christine Armer
Christine’s work has largely involved multitrophic analyses of biological control systems. As an undergrad in Jay Rosenheim’s lab at UC-Davis she participated in a now-classic study of intraguild predation in the cotton aphid community. In her Master’s project with Rob Wiedenmann at Illinois she studied plant characteristics that influence plant feeding in the omnivorous bug Orius. In her Ph.D. she has been studying the effects of potato glycoalkaloids on infection of the Colorado potato beetle by an entomopathogenic nematode. Among her honors include an EPA Star Fellowship and the John Henry Comstock Award for the Pacific Branch of the ESA.
2002 Runner-up Lindsey Milbrath.
Lindsey did a Masters degree with the 2002 Distinguished Scientists, the Taubers. Here he studied the effects of green lacewing behavior on prey specificity. In between graduate programs he worked on the biology and natural enemies of weevil and flea beetle pests of clover and oilseed crops. In his Ph.D. he has moved down a trophic level to investigate indirect competition between two biological control agents on musk thistle. Lindsey has long been associated with IOBC and is perhaps the only student to have served on the Governing Board. Other honors include twice winning the ESA poster competition in Section Cd, Behavior and Ecology.