SAN ANTONIO – For the second year in a row, Entomology Ph.D. student Carrie Deans has received an award at the 2015 Beltwide Cotton Conference in January.
Deans received the Best Ph.D. Student Oral Presentation Prize in the Insect Research and Control section for her talk titled “The Impact of Nutrition on Cry1Ac Susceptibility in Helicoverpa Zea (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae): A Case Study in Environmentally-Mediated Resistance” during the three-day long conference held in San Antonio.
This is Deans’ second award at the national conference. She also received the Best PhD Student Oral Presentation Prize in the Insect Research and Control section for her talk titled “Macronutrient preference and effect on performance in Lygus hesperus (Hemiptera: Miridae)” at the 2014 conference in New Orleans.
Deans is co-advised by Dr. Greg Sword and Dr. Spence Behmer of the Department of Entomology. This is the third time in three years that a PhD student from Sword’s lab has received the prestigious award at the conference, and he is very proud of her hard work.
“To win the best PhD student presentation prize two years in a row is an incredible accomplishment. The competition was tough. Importantly, the work she presented to win the prize again this year was a different body of research than the project that won her last year’s award,” Sword said. “Carrie has done a tremendous about of work. Both the quality and relevance of her research to agriculture and cotton production in particular is evident by her winning these back-to-back awards.”
Behmer also praised her hard work and dedication to her project and said that the award was very deserving.
“Carrie has been an exceptional student,” Behmer said. “This award is a very good recognition of her intellectual abilities and hard work.”