I gave a talk on my work with cotton fleahoppers at the Beltwide Cotton Conferences 2023 (Jan 10-12; New Orleans, LA), entitled “Effect of Moisture Treatment on Cotton Fleahopper Nymph Emergence from Woolly Croton”. Pictured at the conference with fellow graduate student Max Sturdivant (from Dr. Isakeit’s lab, PLPM), and former BESC student, Alexandra Crowder. Picture taken by Dr. Chappell, who also gave a talk at the conference, entitled “Interaction between Pathogenic and Saprophytic Growth of Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. vasinfectum“.

Manjari passed her PhD preliminary exam on Dec 13, advancing to candidacy.

I presented at Entomology 2021, the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America (Oct 31-Nov 3; Denver, CO). Here’s a picture of me beside my poster, entitled “Phenology modeling of cotton fleahopper nymph emergence from woolly croton”. I placed second in the graduate poster competition in the Invasive Species and Vectors category.

I presented some of my preliminary results related to cotton fleahoppers at the annual graduate poster symposium hosted by the department (PLPM, TAMU) on April 21, winning second place in the early career category. It was a great experience interacting with the other graduate students and getting to know more about their research.

Here is a cool image of a cotton aphid feeding on colored artificial diet — I am excited to use this system to study vectoring mechanisms.