May 16, 2008
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Anna Lam's prize-winning poster. |
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Laura Dickson's prize-winning poster. |
DAVIS—Two students tied for first place in the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association’s research poster competition for undergraduates.
Anna Lam, who works with graduate student Eli Sarnat in ant researcher Phil Ward’s lab, and Laura Dickson, who works in malaria researcher Shirley Luckhart’s lab, each shared the $300 prize. The $100 honorable mention award went to Kirin Basuta and Nimrah Choudhary in Larry Godfrey’s lab.
Lam's poster was titled: "Digital Imaging: Influence on Taxonomic Research and Education." Dickson's poster was titled "Human Insulin, Aging and Malaria in a Vector Mosquito: the Roles of Oxidative Stress and Signalling." (Dickson was just notified this month that she's received a Fulbright grant to study malaria in Kenya.)
“The undergraduate research poster competition was designed by students in the Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA) as an educational outreach opportunity,” said coordinator Andrea Lucky, a graduate student in Ward’s lab. “All our grads here were undergrad researchers once, and we were interested in encouraging our current undergrads to really engage with their work.”
“We picked a poster competition because it allowed students at all stages of research to summarizing what they have done, are doing or planning to do. Many of us know how valuable it can be to summarize research for a public event, but undergrads are often unaware that posters, like talks and papers, are one of the standard forms of presenting research at conferences and meetings.”
The competition was open to all undergrads working with or for a lab in entomology/nematology, or for anyone working on insect-related projects. The EGSA sponsored the contest, supporting it with funds earned from a graduate student-led freshman seminar, “Bugs and the Media, Fall 2007.”
Lucky and fellow graduate students Soledad Villamil and Hanayo Arimoto served on the planning committee.
Next year EGSA plans to reach more undergraduates who work with insects. These include student researchers in Ecology and Evolution, Population Biology, Animal Behavior, and Genetics, among others.
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--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
