Undergraduate Research Symposia

Cameron Dunne, Angelique Robinson, and Jack Taylor will give their Capstone ENTO 4800 final research presentations on May 1 at 9:00 a.m. in Room 216.

May Graduates

Cameron Dunne is completing his B.S. degree in Entomology.  He has accepted a summer internship with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, and then will pursue an M.S. degree in Fisheries Science.

Luana Muller titled her M.S. thesis, “Meta-Analytical Approaches to Quantify Disease Losses and Evaluate Fungicide Efficacy and Profitability in Peanut and Soybean Production Systems in Oklahoma.”  Her advisor has been Dr. Maira Duffeck. Luana has accepted a position in market development at BIOTROP, a company that develops biological agricultural products, specializing in row crops such as soybeans, corn, and wheat. She will be working across Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri.  Luana received her B.S. degree in Agronomy from the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Florianópolis, Brazil in 2022.

Angelique Robinson is completing her B.S. degree in Entomology and Psychology.  She will be attending the College of Veterinary Medicine at OSU in the fall and plans to obtain both her DVM and Ph.D. degrees.

Rajat Sharma titled his Ph.D. dissertation, “ Identification and Mapping of Stripe Rust and Leaf Rust Resistance Genes in U.S. Great Plains Hard Winter Wheat.”  Dr. Meriem Aoun has been his advisor.  Rajat will be a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Rajandeep Sekhon at Clemson University where his research will focus on the systems genetics of leaf senescence in maize. The project aims to identify genes and regulatory elements that control leaf senescence by integrating physiological data with multi-omics approaches (metabolomics, transcriptomics, chromatin accessibility, and single-cell RNA-seq).  Rajat received his B.S. degree in Agriculture and his M.S. degree in Genetics and Plant Breeding, both from Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University in Hisar, India, in 2019 and 2021, respectively.

New Face

Jack Brooks began working part-time as a Student Worker in the main office on March 31 and will focus on social media for the department.

Departmental Seminars

Sanborn Entomology Club

Officer elections for the Sanborn Entomology Club were held on April 21.  New officers are as follows:

• President - Kylie Spradling
• Vice President - Katelyn Wang
• Treasurer - Keeta Snell
• Secretary - David Rosenberg
• Social Media Manager - Nikole Ewing
• Student Representatives - Nikolai Thielepape, Kevin Lockridge, and Ashle Zelada

Thanks to Kylie Spradling for serving a second term in this leadership position!

Oklahoma State Bugs and Blights Association

New officers for the 2026-2027 academic year are as follows:

• President - Rodrigo Soares
• Vice President - Daniel Ramos Lopez
• Secretary - Anju Ara
• Treasurer - Chad Zerr
• Communications - Rachel Seay
• Representative 1 - Dakota Serra
• Representative 2 - Jakob West

Thanks to Tanner Dollar for his leadership as President in the current academic year!

On the Move

Emmily Hood has accepted a new position of Accountant II with Enterprise Information Technology at OSU.  Her last day with our financial team was April 30 and she began her new position on May 1.

Alumni News

Leo Santos (M.S. 2020) won first place in the Graduate Student Oral Presentation Competition during the Soils and Crops 2026 conference in Prairieland Park, Saskatoon, Canada on March 17-18.  His presentation was titled, “When Control Backfires:  Insecticides May Affect Predators of the Alfalfa Weevil.”  Leo has been a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada since September 2024.  He received his B.S. degree in Agronomic Engineering from the Faculty of Agronomic Sciences - Sao Paulo State University in Botucatu, Brazil in 2018 and his M.S. degree in Entomology from OSU in December 2020 under the direction of Dr. Wyatt Hoback.