OSU Represented at ESA’s NCB Meeting (wow alphabet soup!)

By Angel Haller

This year, the Entomological Society of America (ESA) held its North Central Branch meeting at For Collins, CO. Several of our OSU graduate students made an appearance as presenters, poster creators, attendees, and games competitors (oh my!) We had several winners:

David Narayanan: Second place BS talk

Arnol Gomez: First place MS poster

Angel Haller: Third place MS talk

Brooke Donzelli: Second place PhD talk

Big CONGRATULATIONS to our winners AND everyone who presented their fantastic research. OSU was very well represented. :)

Additionally, for the first time in a few years, OSU had an entomology games team to compete! For those who are unaware, the entomology games are a trivia competition calling upon obscure entomology facts and pop culture references. Big shoutout to our team, starring me, Arnol Gomez, Danna Vera, Lucy Guarneri, Yamikani Ng’ona, Adam Foster, and our coach Joe Raczkowski for leading us to success. We won our first game in the preliminary round, but lost to the veterans at Kansas State who will go on to represent the North Central Branch in the National entomology games competition later this year. Congratulations to their team for a good game! This was our first time competing in the entomology games, and even though we didn’t make it to the finals, we all had a great time and it was a fun test of our accumulated entomology knowledge.

(The moment we all realized we won our first ever game!)

I want to give a big thank you to our entomology department for allowing us to shine at these conferences. When was first accepted to this program, I never thought I would have the opportunity to travel around the country to network and hone my professional talents. I’m so lucky and grateful to be part of such a wonderful and supportive department!