Dr. Michael Scharf will be speaking about termite caste differentiation and lignocellulose digestion for our seminar on Friday, Sept. 11th.  We will host a light departmental breakfast with Dr. Scharf from 9:00-9:30 am in room A559 instead of a pre-seminar reception.

The L.D. Newsom Student Award reception 2009- on May 11th 2009 at 3 pm in LSB A559. Mrs. L.D. (Alma) Newsom will be joining us for this special event.

Congratulations Dr. Fangneng Huang who has been promoted to Associate Professor of Entomology with tenure.  This promotion represented well-deserved recognition of Dr. Huang’s accomplishments since coming to LSU AgCenter.  We look forward to continuing accomplishments from Dr. Huang’s program.

Congratulations Waseem Akbar (Ph.D. student under Gene Reagan), winner of the L.D. Newsom Graduate Student Award from the Entomology Department.  This award is conferred for outstanding accomplishment by a Ph.D. student during the previous calendar year.

Congratulations to the following awardees at the Entomological Society of America, Southeastern Branch meeting in Montgomery, AL Mar 8-10, 2009:

• Dr. Gene Reagan, Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching
• Dr. Gregg Henderson, Recognition Award in Insect Physiology, Biochemistry and Toxicology
• Drs. Dale Pollet and Dennis Ring were included in the 2009 Friends of Southern IPM Bright Idea Award.  The award recognized members of the Southern Region School IPM working Group that is implementing IPM for schools in Louisiana.   This is the first Team Award conferred by the society. 
• These awards represented 3 of the 8 top professional awards conferred by the society.
• Kyle Fontenot (M.S. student under Dr. Roger Leonard) won First Place in the Master’s Student Paper Competition. The department’s Linnaean Team (Julien Beuzelin, Ph.D. student under Dr. Gene Reagan, Matt Gimmel, Ph.D. student under Dr. Chris Carlton, Jennifer Gordon, M.S. student under Dr. Jim Ottea, and Kat Parys, Ph.D. student under Dr. Seth Johnson; alternate Grant Aucoin, M.S. student under Dr. Wayne Kramer), coached by Dr. Natalie Hummel and Dr. Jeremy Allison, was the runner-up out of 9 teams representing Southeastern Branch universities.  This event is a College Bowl-style competition testing each team’s knowledge of entomological concepts, history, biographies, current advances and trivia.  Our team won the extra initial round (vs. Georgia) to establish an 8-team pool and went on to defeat Clemson and Arkansas before losing to North Carolina State.  Our team distinguished itself by having all four contestants receiving points for the team.  Each Branch sends two teams to the national ESA competition, which will be held in December this year in Indianapolis, IN.  Our team brought back a $600 check to help toward travel to the national meeting.
• Additional awards were received for photos entered in the Photo Salon:
  1. Ana Meszaros received a 2nd place award in the Action category
  2. Kat Parys received a 3rd place award in the Traditional Macro category
  3. Dr. Claudia Husseneder received both 1st and 2nd place awards in the Artistic category.

 Congratulations to Xiaoyi Wu, Ph.D. student under Fangneng Huang, for receiving the President’s prize (1st place award) in section PIE 7 (Pest Management) for his poster “Susceptibility of Cry1Ab-resistant and –susceptible sugarcane borer (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) to four Bacillus thuringiensis toxins” at the Entomological Society of America meeting in Reno, NV Nov 16-19.

 Gregg Henderson Award: Please join me in congratulating Gregg Henderson on his selection for the 2009 Entomological Society of America’s Recognition Award in Insect Physiology, Biochemistry and Toxicology from the Southeastern Branch of the ESA.  He will be presented with this award at the Awards Luncheon, March 10, 2009 during the SEB Annual Meeting in Montgomery, AL.  Gregg also will be the SEB’s 2009 nominee for this award at the national level.