COLLEGE STATION, Texas—Three students received top recognition during the Department’s annual Graduate Student Forum on Thursday, August 24.
Ph.D. student Shavonn Whiten received first place for her presentation titled “Putting the pieces together: Insight into the perimeter of protection provided by the peritrophic matrix after adult mosquito blood feeding” while Ph.D. student Chloe Hawkings got second place for her talk titled “Expression analysis of vitellogenin in the worker caste of the red imported ant, Solenopsis invicta,”and Ph.D. student Alex Payne received third place for her presentation titled “Synergistic effects of in-hive miticides and agro-chemicals on honey bee (Apis mellifera) colony growth and survival”
These students’ presentations were chosen from more than nine presentations that were spread over two sessions that covered several different presentation topics ranging from population genomics of cotton fleahoppers to monarch butterfly breeding in the south central United States.
The forum allows current graduate students a chance to present their latest research projects and to practice public speaking skills and to get ready for upcoming 10-minute paper presentation competitions at the upcoming national meeting of the Entomological Society of America that will be held in Denver on November 5-8.