Bee Health, Biocontrol, Mosquitoes, and More On Tap for 2024 Early Career Professionals Recognition Symposium
Editor’s Note: This is the next article in the “Standout ECPs” series contributed by the Entomological Society of America’s Early Career Professionals (ECP) Committee, highlighting outstanding ECPs that are doing great work in the profession. (An ECP is defined as anyone within the first five years of obtaining their terminal degree in their field.) Read past articles in the Standout ECPs series.
Now in its fourth year, the Early Career Professionals Recognition Symposium at the Entomological Society of America Annual Meeting honors a standout entomologist from each ESA Section doing important, innovative, or creative work during the early stages of their career.
At Entomology 2024, November 10–13 in Phoenix, Arizona, the Early Career Professional Recognition Symposium and Town Hall will take place at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, November 12. Below, meet the five entomologists chosen for the symposium, one from each ESA Section, and learn more about their work and career paths so far. Each will deliver a 30-minute presentation about their work at the symposium. Presentation titles are listed with each Q&A; for the full schedule and more info, see the ECP Recognition Symposium in the Entomology 2024 online program or mobile app.
Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity Section
Madison Sankovitz, Ph.D.
University of Colorado
Presentation: “From Varroa to Vespa: Unraveling the challenges to honey bee survival across Asia.”
Madison Sankovitz, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral researcher in the Boulder Bee Lab at the University of Colorado’s BioFrontiers Institute. Her presentation at the Early Career Professional Recognition Symposium will follow her journey through Asia to study parasites and predators of honey bees. Sankovitz received a B.A. in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Colorado Boulder and a Ph.D. in entomology from the University of California, Riverside. During both degrees, she studied the ecology and genomics of social insects.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became interested in entomology.
As an entomologist and artist, my work often leads me on field expeditions. My fascination with insects dates back to my early childhood; if you had asked me at the age of six what I aspired to be, my answer would have been an entomologist!
What inspires your research and professional interests?
I find social insects to be endlessly fascinating. We can learn so much from them about social evolution, and they also tend to have outsized ecological impacts on our world. Of all the social insects, I especially love working with honey bees because of the human element; they are essential to global food security, and I love working with growers.
Agriculture has always fascinated me because I find a lot of beauty in the organization and problem-solving associated with working with the land in that way. Also, the process of seemingly growing something out of nothing is magical to me. So, my work with honey bees puts me in the way of this beauty.
What advice would you give to fellow early career professionals?
There is no set path to success. Start, persist, and repeat. Remember, anything worthwhile takes time.
You don’t need to give up parts of yourself to be a scientist. In fact, the more facets of life you explore and the more dimensions of yourself you bring to the table, the better scientist you will be. Embrace your uniqueness and let it enrich your work.
Don’t shy away from expressing your genuine excitement about insects! The world doesn’t need more closed-off researchers toiling away in the lab. Share your enthusiasm and love for what you do.
Finally, keep doing what you enjoy, and don’t be afraid to go after what you want! Trust yourself and your ideas. You know best what you’re capable of.
If you could be any arthropod, what would you pick and why?
A northern giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia). Although many people despise them, they are strong and gorgeous—absolute machines of insects!
Learn more about Sankovitz and her work via Google Scholar.
Plant–Insect Ecosystems Section
Nicole Quinn, Ph.D.
University of Florida
Presentation: “Good bugs and bad bugs across time and space: A crash course in the diversity and creativity of modern classical biological control programs.”
Nicole F. Quinn, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Entomology and Nematology at the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Indian River Research and Education Center in Fort Pierce, Florida. She studies the classical biological control of invasive invertebrates, currently focused primarily on hibiscus mealybug (Nipaecoccus viridis) and Bulimulus snails (Bulimulus bonariensis). She also teaches courses on biological control and consequences of biological invasions.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became interested in entomology.
I had always liked insects but didn’t realize there were careers related to them. I started my undergraduate career at Gettysburg College as a pre-vet student, but it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t the right focus. I found my way back to ecology and insects through a combination of listening to my instincts, a study abroad program in Ecuador, and some very positive research experiences with faculty on campus and at a nearby Penn State University research center.
During the course of all this I also became fascinated by sustainable agriculture and invasive species. After graduation, I tried to work a “normal” desk job and felt unfulfilled, so I dove headfirst back into the world of insects and research via a field technician job followed by graduate school, a postdoc, and finally my current role as an Assistant Professor.
What inspires your research and professional interests?
Invasive species impact our economy, ecosystems, and lives every day. Classical biological control gives us an opportunity to provide effective, long-term, low-cost management of some of the most challenging pests out there. With modern risk analysis and testing methods, it is one of the safest and most pragmatic approaches.
Classical biological control allows me to study insects from an applied perspective while also exploring the basic ecology and biology of species that are often completely unknown to science. Even if the invader and the candidate classical biological control agents are well-studied in their native range, their interactions with each other and the rest of the ecosystem might be very different in their new environment. Parsing out the factors that impact how natural enemies perform in different contexts never gets boring.
What advice would you give to fellow early career professionals?
Make space for intuition, creativity, and failure in your process. Sure, sometimes things won’t work, or you might be completely wrong, but there is also a good chance that you’re onto something new and exciting. Whatever the outcome, you will have learned something. A willingness to fall completely flat on your face and pick yourself up again is essential. This goes for everything, not just research.
If you could be any arthropod, what would you pick and why?
Maybe a dragonfly? I would want to have good mobility and vision.
Learn more about Quinn and her work via Google Scholar, ResearchGate, LinkedIn, or her UF faculty profile.
Medical, Urban, and Veterinary Entomology Section
Victor M. Cardoso-Jaime, Ph.D.
Johns Hopkins University
Presentation: “Hemocytes pleiotropic effects on midgut homeostasis and immunity are agonists of Plasmodium falciparum infection.”
Victor M. Cardoso-Jaime, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral researcher at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in the lab of George Dimopoulos, Ph.D. He received his Ph.D. in Mexico at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (CINVESTA-IPN) and the National Institute of Public Health’s (INSP-CISEI).
Cardoso-Jaime is interested in studying mosquitoes’ immune systems, and his current research focuses on uncovering the mechanisms by which hemocytes (macrophage-like cells) influence mosquitoes’ permissiveness to the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and dengue virus infections.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became interested in entomology.
I was born in Puente de Ixtla, Morelos State, Mexico. It is a small city where dengue fever is endemic. Because of this, I grew up seeing how mosquitoes cause a health and economic disaster every year. I myself have experienced dengue fever a couple of times, and every time I had to stop all my activities for two weeks. Thinking in numbers, thousands of people get sick during the rainy season and cannot work for some weeks, and this is the best scenario; in the worst, people die.
But not all my interactions with insects were bad; my parents’ garden was full of insects, including honey bees, butterflies, fireflies, and beetles. Nowadays, I am still stunned by the incredible diversity of insects, and these experiences awakened my interest in studying them.
In my free time, I enjoy spending time with my family and friends, trying different kinds of food, visiting museums, and painting.
What inspires your research and professional interests?
I was born in a dengue-endemic region, and I have experienced dengue fever twice, and I have seen what a disaster mosquitoes can cause. However, this is only one of the diseases that mosquitoes can transmit; as an example, malaria is still causing more than 250 million cases and more than a half million deaths globally every year, most of them kids under five years old. Mosquitoes are the second deadliest animals for humans, only surpassed by the humans themselves.
Every year we hear about re-emergent mosquito-borne diseases—just for example, the global Zika emergency in 2016 and the current alarming Oropouche outbreaks in the Americas. Nowadays, many are concerned about the future of vector-borne diseases with climate change, since global warming is helping to spread mosquitoes’ habitat, accelerate their life cycle, and enhance the transmission of pathogens.
When I was finishing at the university, I decided to contribute to controlling vector-borne diseases in some way, and then I started to study mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are very complex animals that share many characteristics with humans; for example, they have organs such as the gut, heart, brain, salivary glands, and immune cells (hemocytes, macrophage-like cells) and a robust immune system that can eliminate many pathogens, including Plasmodium (malaria parasite) and viruses such as dengue, Zika, chikungunya, Oropouche, Mayaro, yellow fever, West Nile viruses, and more.
I am interested in studying several aspects of mosquito biology, including immunity, physiology, and development. My current research is focused on the mechanisms by which hemocytes (macrophage-like cells) influence infections by the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and dengue virus in mosquitoes. I really enjoy experiments; however, I do not believe science is just in the lab and publishing articles. Sharing our knowledge and experiences with others is another way to do science. I like to communicate science by giving talks, writing articles in a friendly way for non-scientific people, and engaging in other activities that make scientific information more accessible to a broad spectrum of people.
What advice would you give to fellow early career professionals?
Enjoy doing science. Sometimes, science can be frustrating because it is a long-term career, some experiments do not work, or we have unexpected results. Overall, this is the path by which people in the same situation discovered many crucial things that we already use daily to save millions of lives and make our lives more comfortable. For example, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin by mistake when a fungus contaminated an experiment. Because of this, millions of lives have been saved, and we can treat several infectious diseases easily which were mortal before penicillin.
On the other hand, I think we scientists have a social responsibility to communicate the benefits of science to society. Our current social crisis is not because society lacks information; it is because society is misinformed. As much as you can, share your knowledge with close people, or by doing science communication; these activities also have a high impact in the lives of the people you reach.
If you could be any arthropod, what would you pick and why?
I would be a mosquito. You should ask why just before you talk about all the problems they cause. However, like us, mosquitoes get infected and are used as a spreading medium for pathogens. Overall, mosquitoes enjoy water when they are eggs, larvae, and pupae. Then, they emerge and can fly. They have different food sources when they are larvae, mainly eating bacteria, algae, and other microorganisms. When they become adults, a blood meal is only required for the female to produce eggs; if not, both males and females can live only by feeding on nectar. Mosquitoes travel around the world; for example, Aedes aegypti has its origins in Africa and is now present in more than 160 countries. Overall, mosquitoes are a problem because they adapt very well to many changes, and that is something that I admire from them.
Learn more about Cardoso-Jaime via Google Scholar, ResearchGate, LinkedIn, or Twitter/X.
Formal & Informal Teaching Section
Laura Kraft, Ph.D.
Washington State University
Presentation: “Evaluating underserved grower needs through a needs assessment of southwest Washington’s cranberry and shellfish growers.”
Laura Kraft, Ph.D., is the cranberry and shellfish extension specialist at Washington State University (WSU) located in Long Beach, Washington. Her research and extension programming focuses on integrated pest management (IPM) for each crop system based on stakeholder needs. She earned a joint B.S. and M.S. degree at the University of Georgia in entomology studying pea aphid endosymbionts. She got her Ph.D. from North Carolina State University studying spotted-wing drosophila IPM practices. After a short postdoctoral experience at the U.S. Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service in Hilo, Hawaii, and a year as the research manager at EPCOT at Walt Disney World Resorts, she landed in her current role with WSU—convinced to settle down after eating some exceptional, homemade oatmeal Craisin cookies at the interview.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became interested in entomology.
I like to joke that our parents didn’t let us get a dog early-enough when we were growing up. Without a dog to lavish attention on at an early age, I turned my sights to the backyard and instead lovingly jarred pill bugs and beetles I could find under rocks. I soon graduated to crickets and even mosquito larvae I pulled out of the birdbath with a turkey baster.
I want to recognize the importance of educators in supporting this love of biology during my K-12 years. Some very forward-thinking teachers in my elementary school brought in a neurobiologist to teach third graders how to dissect a sheep’s brain, the acrid smell of which I still recall fondly. I remember trying to study an invasive algae with the full support of my eighth grade teacher until we found out it was a Class A noxious weed in the United States (a healthy if frustrating early lesson in research permits). In high school, I was shopping online for fancy cockroaches on a casual Saturday morning, like I think most of us have, and turned to ask my father if I could borrow the credit card to purchase some. Absolutely not! he said. I then devised a sneaky plan to use cockroaches for a science fair project so I couldn’t possibly be denied and wound up at the Georgia state finals at the University of Georgia (UGA) after rearing 1,500 cockroaches in my bedroom for a year to see if they could reproduce through parthenogenesis. While there, I met Marianne Shockley, Ph.D., who was incredibly welcoming and supportive to a young entomologist, so I changed my major and set my sights on UGA for a degree in entomology.
What inspires your research and professional interests?
Oswaldo De Leon Kantule is an Indigenous artist in Panama that I follow after first discovering his art in a Spanish class in high school. When I got to visit the country a few years ago, I stopped by his gallery in Panama City and was struck by a painting of invasive lionfish in fiery red tones, which evoked such ire at the destruction that invasive species have on local ecology, better than I have ever been able to put into words in a publication. The painting now hangs in my office to remind me of that anger and passion and always reminds me why I prefer to focus on invasive species pest management and prevention.
As an avid traveler, I am always careful to clean shoes and take care not to pack products that might carry invasive species (like seeds, wood carvings, produce, or funny coconut sculptures). Education feels like a natural way to connect about that same passion, whether through outreach events, extension programming, or formal classroom education.
What advice would you give to fellow early career professionals?
I think the advice to “just say no” has gotten a little trite. Recently, I read a great, feminist book on perfectionism that helped explain that for individuals who really enjoy what they do, it feels different to say no. We’re not saying no to things we don’t want to do, but rather we are given so many amazing opportunities that we desperately want to say yes to—and have to learn how to say no in order to prioritize those most important to us. This was incredibly helpful to me to finally start prioritizing, at least some of the time. I say this admitting that I have currently slightly overcommitted myself yet again for next year, knowing these opportunities were too important and exciting not to miss. Maybe I’ll just be a little late turning in some receipts, but I feel good about that balance.
I am really hardcore about my calendar. If it isn’t in the calendar, it isn’t happening. I learned to block out time for projects. For example, I have some days blocked out to work on third-year review documents this month and review grants next month. I try to never take meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I can actually get some work done. The one thing I think I do well is a work-life balance. Let me be clear: I am only working on average 40 hours a week (a little more during field season, a little less during down season), and I take all of my vacation days and sick days, with a healthy number stored for emergencies. I love taking time off from work, but I do still feel weirdly guilty about it. If you have suggestions for feeling less guilty about taking time off, I really want to hear them!
If you could be any arthropod, what would you pick and why?
I would like to be one of those long-distance-migrating dragonflies. I like imagining that I would still be able to travel and would be a really cool predator with bright, striking colors to boot.
Learn more about Kraft and her work via Instagram or the WSU Long Beach Research and Extension Unit.
Physiology, Biochemistry, and Toxicology Section
Pierre Lau, Ph.D.
U.S. Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service
Presentation: “Honey bee immune response to sublethal concentrations of clothianidin goes beyond the macronutrients found in artificial diets.”
Pierre Lau, Ph.D., began researching pollinators in 2011, first looking at native bee pollination in watermelon agroecosystems one summer at Cal Poly Pomona and then studying salt preferences of honey bee water foragers at University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He received a B.S. in environmental systems (ecology, behavior, and evolution) from UCSD and a Ph.D. at Texas A&M University. Currently, Lau is a research ecologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service’s new Pollinator Health in Southern Crop Ecosystems Research unit in Stoneville, Mississippi. His research program focuses on bee nutritional ecology and improving pollinator health in agroecosystems.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became interested in entomology.
If I had the opportunity to meet my younger self, past me would be in utter disbelief with my career choice and where I ended up. Most of the family and friends I grew up with don’t understand why I moved from Los Angeles to Texas and now live in a small-town Mississippi. I guess there is just something about bees that pointed or danced my way toward the deep south.
For some context, I knew I wanted to do something with environmental science after spending countless weekends and summers hiking and camping in Boy Scouts. I developed an appreciation for the environment, which led to pursuing a major in environmental systems in college. I was fascinated with marine biology. One of my good friends then got me involved in a research lab studying algae biofuel ecology. I absolutely loved being able to apply the ecological concepts we learned in class in research, but my low attention span struggled with the monotonous and repetitive lab work associated with that research.
I shot my shot one summer with a few professors near my hometown and stumbled upon a pollination ecology lab. I was immediately smitten with the study system when I learned about the importance of pollination services and agriculture. It also had the perfect balance between field and lab work. Since then, I have not stopped pursuing research opportunities on pollinator health, even if it meant relocating and adapting to completely new environments.
What inspires your research and professional interests?
I think my background in ecology perfectly suits how my brain works. As an ecologist, I am more of a big-picture thinker, and I enjoy making connections across different fields. I am not an expert on microbiology or chemistry, but having broad knowledge across multiple topics and collaborators in these fields makes it feasible to take on these big-picture interdisciplinary studies. I find this to be an important aspect to making real-world connections in study systems.
Professionally, I always find it rejuvenating after attending and presenting at a stakeholder conference, especially when they show the importance of the research we are doing. It is also vital for us as a federal agency to understand and directly address beekeeper research needs. There are greater impacts on food security and how it is all connected with social and environmental justice, as well.
Personally, I’m interested in understanding what I eat, where it comes from, and its nutritional value. If it weren’t for my current research, I could see myself getting into food science and nutrition. My research with bees has very similar themes. Part of my group’s interest is to understand bee foraging preferences, nutritional requirements, and how land management practices can affect their food. Frankly, I am not sure if it was a coincidence or if my personal interests internally took over when I am thinking of new projects.
What advice would you give to fellow early career professionals?
Don’t overlook your own personal and professional development! While technical skills and publications are important, your ability to connect with and relate to people can open doors to unexpected opportunities. Strong interpersonal skills are crucial for networking, grant writing, and public outreach. By investing in your personal development, you’ll not only enhance your research career but also make lifelong friends and colleagues along the way.
If you could be any arthropod, what would you pick and why?
I’m going to be generic here and give an expected answer, but I would pick honey bees as a superorganism. At the end of the day, this was the insect that captivated me to pursue my research career. I was captivated by their ability to communicate foraging by dancing and their stop-signaling behavior when I was in Dr. James Nieh’s lab. It gets even more complex when a swarm is looking for a new home. Their social structure and their ability to make collective decisions when their lives and overall wellbeing are at stake are sights to behold. Dr. Thomas Seeley even drew parallels between the honey bee collective decision process and human decision making in his book, Honeybee Democracy.
