Congratulations to Christine Madamba, an undergraduate researcher in the lab, for winning 2nd place in the recent Mentorship in Entomology Forum held on Feb. 9, 2018. Her award-winning talk was titled, “Fungal seed treatment enhances defensive volatile response to herbivory in cotton.” Christine and her graduate student mentor, Cody Gale, each took home a cash prize for their outstanding efforts.
Tyler wins Outstanding Graduate Student Award!
Congratulations to our very own Tyler Raszick for winning the 2018 Department of Entomology Outstanding Graduate Student Award! Tyler’s research is going very well and he’s been heavily involved in a number of department and campus-wide service activities. We are proud to claim one of the five most powerful grad students on campus as one of our own!
Full story here.
Lab gets unexpected visitor – A truck!!!
It’s not everyday that a truck crashes into your lab, but that’s exactly what happened. Cesar was in the room at the time. Apart from getting covered in a pile of bricks, we are happy to report that he survived the experience with only a few bumps and bruises. Once the side of the building is rebuilt, we are going to name it the “Cesar Valencia almost Memorial Wall”.
Full story here.
James Glover wins Best PhD Presentation prize at 2018 Beltwide Cotton Conference
Congratulations to James Glover for winning the Best PhD Presentation prize (again!) for his talk at the Insect Research and Control Conference at the 2018 Beltwide Cotton Conference. James’ talk was titled “Pathogenicity and Transmission of Cotton Seed & Boll Rotting Bacteria Vectored by the Verde Plant Bug”. This was James’ second win, having taken the first place prize in the same competition two years ago at the 2016 Beltwide Conference.
Members of the Sword Lab have won the award five of the six last years!
Full story here.
Lots of new faces – Fall 2017
The lab is off to a great start for the Fall 2017 semester welcoming Loren Rivera-Vega as a postdoc, Janaina Câmara (PhD student), Kristin Hamons (MS student) and Jon Hernandez (Research Asst.). We are also happy to have undergraduates Connor Purcell and Malissa Klemp joining Kayleigh Boll, Sean Keegan, Allison Lazear and Manuel Ramirez in the lab as members of what we affectionately refer to as “Polly’s Army”.