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Entomology Students Win President’s Prizes at Entomological Society of America Meeting
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by Susan Johnson
Three University of Maryland students and one recent graduate won prizes at the Entomology Society of America’s (ESA) annual meeting this week for their research presentations to the Society. The President’s Prize was awarded to graduate students Miles Lepping, Ada Szczepaniec, and Julie Hébert. Lauren Culler, a 2008 graduate, was a runner-up. Two-hundred sixty-six students competed for 22 President’s Prizes awarded for 10-minute talks in areas covering every area of insect science, from ecology to pest control to systematics.
“The ESA student competition is a great opportunity to present our ideas to fellow grads and colleagues from other institutions and at the same time receive constructive feedback from the judges,” said Miles. Miles’ talk, Estimating carabid beetle population parameters in field corn to identify potential bioindicator species, gave him a chance to show off his own insect-collecting device, the G-vac, which he designed and built himself. Miles is a student of Paula Shrewsbury and competed in the section “Plant-Insect Ecosystems: Ecosystems.”
Ada, a doctoral student in Mike Raupp’s lab, remarked that “winning a competition at the ESA national meeting is like a cherry on top of an already-great adventure!” Ada won for her talk Expression of selected tomato genes involved in plant defense following application of a systemic insecticide imidaclopid, in the section “Plant-Insect Ecosystems: Host Plant Resistance.”
Julie, a student of Dave Hawthorne, exclaimed out loud and then started laughing when her name appeared on the screen during the award ceremony for the prize in “Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity: Behavior.” Her winning talk was entitled, Genetic evidence for host race formation in the leafmining fly, Phytomyza glabricola. “I didn’t expect it,” said Julie after the ceremony. “It was my first talk ever!”
With four prizes, the University of Maryland was one of the most-awarded institutions in attendance at the conference.
“I feel very proud,” said Lauren, who was runner-up for her presentation on the Master’s thesis research she completed in 2008 with Bill Lamp on beetle predation of mosquitoes. “Proud for myself, but also for all of the University of Maryland’s continued accomplishments in ESA.”
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