Department of Entomology
Vegetable Entomology / Szendrei Laboratory

Amanda Buchanan has accepted a postdoc position to work on a project jointly funded to Matt Grieshop’s and our lab. Her focus will be on asparagus related experiments this summer. We also have to new graduate students joining the VegEnt lab; Margie Lund will be starting this June, and will be working on an organic project dealing with the impact of tillage practices and cover crops on insects in agroecosystems. Ari Grode is currently transitioning from undergrad to grad student status and will be working on a project looking at the relationship between onion thrips and a bacterial disease of...

Nicole and Adam won MSU Entomology Department Awards, each worth $1,500. The awards were given out at the Spring MSU Entomology Picnic on May 1. Congratulations!

Adam Ingrao received the prestigious NSF Graduate Student Fellowship, which will provide funding for his tuition and salary for the next 3 years. Coincidentally, he found out about this good news on the same day when he successfully defended his PhD thesis proposal and officially became a PhD candidate. Adam’s PhD research focuses on arthropod predators in Michigan asparagus agroecosystems and asparagus plant volatiles that could be used to manipulate natural enemies.

Congratulations to M.S. student Nicole Quinn for receiving Northcentral SARE‘s graduate student grant in support of her research on enhancing pollinators with flowers in cucurbits. The ~$10,000 will go towards undergraduate support in the field season, supplies and travel.

Congratulations to Katie Demeuse for winning the poster competition at MSU’s Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum (UURAF) in the Agriculture and Animal Science Section. She presented her work on the genetic regulation of insecticide resistance in Colorado potato beetles.