The Department of Entomology would like to congratulate Ph.D. candidate Liz Walsh as she received the 2019 Outstanding Grad Student Award in the Ph.D. category.
The award was given during a special presentation during the pre-seminar social held in the Heep Center fourth floor atrium on Thursday, February 14.
Walsh is no stranger to the Department, as she joined Dr. Juliana Rangel’s laboratory in June 2013 as a student in the National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduate – EXCITE program. Walsh graduated from her undergraduate institution, Ripon College, in Wisconsin in 2014 and was recruited by Rangel to work in her lab in the fall of 2014.
Walsh is conducting her research projects related to the combined effects of using miticides and other agro-chemicals and how they affect the reproductive health of queens in honey bee colonies. She also co-authored a paper that was published recently in the journal called Insects.
Walsh also is an Apprentice Master Beekeeper for the Texas Master Beekeeper Program and is a regular instructor for the annual bee schools held by the Central Texas, Brazos Valley, and the Austin Area beekeepers associations, as well as the Texas Beekeepers Association’s Summer Clinic, and has been invited to speak at various beekeeping organizations around the country.
She received several awards and honors during her college career, including the 2018 Research Award from the American Association of Professional Apiculturists and the 2017 International Union for the Study of Social Insects’ Jeffery LaFage Award in Applied Social Insect Biology projects. Walsh also won second place in the oral competition at the Entomological Society of America’s oral competition in 2017 and the Graduate Student Research Award in 2015.
She has also been active in beekeeping outreach, including writing a methods paper titled “Queen pheromones and mandibular gland dissection” and a review paper titled “Local honey bee queen production and quality” in the journal Bee World and is a regular column writer for the Kelley Online Newsletter.
Walsh has been a teaching assistant in the ENTO 320 Honey Bee Biology class for 3 years and for the ENTO 321 Beekeeping Laboratory during the spring semester of 2018.
“I am delighted that I get to work with Liz every day, as I am proud that I am helping promote diversity in the STEM fields and the field of apiculture by helping to train such a strong and intelligent female scientist,” Rangel said.