Congratulations to molecular geneticist-physiologist Joanna Chiu, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology!

She's the recipient of the highly competitive "Distinction in Student Mentoring' Award from the Pacific Branch, Entomology Society of America (PBESA).

So well-deserved!

Other PBESA winners announced today are: 

• C. W. Woodworth Award: Elizabeth Beers, Washington State University (WSU)
• Distinction in Student Mentoring Award: Joanna Chiu, UC Davis
• Distinguished Achievement in Extension Award: Wendy Sue Wheeler, WSU
• Excellence in Integrated Pest Management: David Haviland, UC Cooperative Extension, Kern County
• Distinguished Achievement in Teaching: Juli Carrillo, University of British Columbia
• Entomology Team Work Award: Tobin  Northfield and colleagues, WSU
• Medical, Urban and Veterinary Entomology Award: Monika Gulia-Nuss, University of Nevada
• Physiology, Biochemistry, and Toxicology Award: Naoki Yamanaka, UC Riverside
• Plant-Insect Ecosystems Award: Allison Hansen, UC Riverside
• Systematics, Evolution and Biodiversity: Silas Bossert, WSU
• Excellence in Early Career Award: Robert Orpet, WSU
• Dr. Stephen Garczynski Undergraduate Research Scholarship: Grant Wass, Palomar College
• John Henry Comstock Award: Dave Elmquist, University of Idaho

They be honored at the PBESA meeting, set April 14-17 in the city of Waikoloa Beach, Hawaii. PBESA encompasses 11 Western states, plus parts of Canada and Mexico, and U.S. territories.

Nematologist Steve Nadler, professor and former chair of the department, nominated Professor Chiu for the mentoring award. He praised her as “an incredible mentor, inspirational, dedicated and passionate about helping her students succeed, as exemplified by her receiving the 2022 UC Davis Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching and Mentoring Award for her contributions to graduate student and professional mentoring, and the 2023 Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research.

“Dr. Chiu is noted for providing her trainees, many of whom are from underrepresented groups, with very effective career and academic advising,” he wrote. “For example, many first-generation and underrepresented undergraduate trainees from her lab are now successfully enrolled in prestigious biological PhD programs, including programs at Stanford, Cornell, Columbia, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Davis, and UC San Francisco. Under her tutelage, her students are first authors of publications in prestigious journals. Even after her undergraduate and graduate students leave the university and settle into their careers, she continues to provide guidance and advice to them.”

Community ecologist Louie Yang, professor of entomology, interim vice chair of the department, and recipient of PBESA's 2023 Distinction in Student Mentoring Award, commented: "Joanna is an extraordinarily talented and committed mentor. She is remarkably good at helping students realize their potential. I've seen this over and over again with undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs."

Chiu, who joined the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology in 2010, co-founded and co-directs the campuswide UC Davis Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology (RSPIB), which she and two other UC Davis entomology faculty members  (UC Davis distinguished professor Jay Rosenheim and Yang) launched in 2011 to provide undergraduates with a closely mentored research experience in biology. The RSPIB scholars typically publish their undergraduate research, and many pursue careers in science.

Fact is, Chiu is legendary for both her mentoring and teaching. 

Chiu lab alumna Katie Freitas of Stanford wrote: “Beyond teaching me practical research skills, Dr. Chiu helped to spark the most important thing a person needs to be a successful scientist: pure joy in the pursuit of knowledge.”

“Throughout all my time in the Chiu lab, Joanna has never failed to amaze me with her kindness, patience, and her consistency and perseverance in helping all students, both in her lab and in other labs, succeed,” wrote Chiu lab alumna Christine Tabuloc, who received her doctorate in 2023 and is now a postdoctoral researcher in the Chiu lab. “What makes her so outstanding is her commitment to helping us improve as scientists and researchers and preparing us for our future career endeavors.”

Nadler concluded that Chiu “offers the tools, guidance, support, empathy, enthusiasm, and feedback that her undergraduate and graduate students need to thrive and succeed. But above all—and this is crucial--she truly cares about her students.

A native of Hong Kong and a first-generation college student, Joanna received her bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, in biology and music from Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, and her doctorate in molecular genetics in 2004 from New York University, New York. She trained as a postdoctoral fellow from 2004 to 2010 in molecular chronobiology at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.  Her postdoctoral training was funded by an NIH F32 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award postdoctoral fellowship and K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award. (See feature story)

Be sure to read our news story, detailing many of her accomplishments in mentoring.  

Congratulations to community ecologist Louie Yang, an innovative professor in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and the 2023 recipient of the Distinction in Student Mentoring Award, sponsored by the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America (PBESA). 

"Louie is known for being a strong advocate for his students and fostering creative and critical thinking," wrote nominator Steve Nadler, professor and chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. "Whether they be undergraduates, graduates, high school students or members of the community, he engages and challenges students in his lectures, in the lab, and in the field. He attends to the unique needs and interests of each student, respecting their perspectives and ideas. He epitomizes what makes a great professor and advisor: his command of the subject matter, his ability to stimulate discussions and involvement, and his kindly concern for their education, welfare, and success."

The award will be presented at PBESA's annual meeting, set April 2-5, in Seattle. PBESA encompasses 11 Western states, plus parts of Mexico and Canada and U.S. territories.

Louie, who received his bachelor's degree in ecology and evolution from Cornell University in 1999, and his doctorate in population biology from UC Davis in 2006, joined the UC Davis faculty in 2009. Since then, he has mentored an estimated 300 persons, including three PhD students who have graduated from his lab; his current five students; 20 undergraduates associated with his lab; students in three UC Davis graduate groups, Entomology, Graduate Group in Ecology, and Population Biology (40), and 140 community members (nearly all high school students), in the Monitoring Milkweed-Monarch Interactions for Learning and Conservation (MMMILC) project.

In providing her support, Helene Dillard, dean of the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CA&ES), wrote:  "Professor Yang is an enthusiastic advisor/mentor, he has a strong commitment to student diversity, and he is dedicated to helping students achieve their academic and career goals. He has developed (or co-developed) innovative programs that provide guided mentoring experiences that encourage students to explore their individual skills and interests.  These programs and Professor Yang's guidance provide critical pathways for recruiting and retaining undergraduate students in STEM fields. Professor Yang has made valuable contributions to student success in our college and campus-wide and we are proud to strongly support his nomination for the PBESA Distinction in Student Mentoring Award."

Professor Yang has welcomed and mentored students from UC Davis and from around the country with the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program and the UC Davis-Howard University Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Ecology and Evolution Graduate Admissions Pathways (EEGAP) program.

He co-directs and mentors students in the Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology (RSPIB), a campuswide program that he and Professors Jay Rosenheim and Joanna Chiu co-founded in 2011 to help students learn cutting-edge research through close mentoring relationships with faculty. The program crosses numerous biological fields, including population biology; behavior and ecology; biodiversity and evolutionary ecology; agroecology; genetics and molecular biology; biochemistry and physiology; entomology; and cell biology. The goal: to provide academically strong and highly motivated undergraduates with a multi-year research experience that cultivates skills that will prepare them for a career in biological research.

Professor Yang primarily teaches Insect Ecology and Field Ecology. Since joining the UC Davis faculty, he has taught some 665 students.  Unsolicited comments on Rate My Professors all show him as “awesome.” Wrote one student: “Professor Yang is enthusiastic, engaging, and overall, one of the best professors I have had. I got the feeling that he wanted to connect with us as ecologists and future scientists, not just as students. He was great at 'show, not tell' and used videos, demonstrations, and discussions to great effect.”

The group letters from his current students and alumni echoed the praise.

Yang believes that  “science progresses by confronting our assumptions, ideas, and hypotheses with data. This dynamic process of confrontation requires a powerful combination of logic and objectivity that is widely recognized as the domain of science. However, the raw material of scientific creativity—the fundamental wellspring for the scientific process—depends on variability in the way people think about how the world works. This diversity of human perspectives allows the scientific community to ask new questions, imagine new solutions to problems, and reconsider entrenched assumptions—all of which accelerate scientific progress. New ideas are the engine of science and that is why I encourage diversity in science.” 

In his research, Yang is involved in monarch conservation science and planning in collaboration with the Western Monarch Conservation Science Group, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation, Monarch Joint Venture, Environment Defense Fund, and the Monarch Summit in DC.   Science Friday, National Public Radio, interviewed Yang about his monarch-milkweed research in February 2022. (Listen to the archived interview.)

The UC Davis professor launched the Monitoring Milkweed-Monarch Interactions for Learning and Conservation (MMMILC) project in 2013 for high school students in the environmental science program at Davis Senior High School or those associated with the Center for Land-Based Learning's Green Corps program. Their tasks: monitoring milkweed-monarch interactions in a project funded by the National Science Foundation.  Yang organized and led a 135-member team, all co-authors of the paper, “Different Factors Limit Early- and Late-Season Windows of Opportunity for Monarch Development,” published in July 2022 in the journal  Ecology and Evolution.  The 107 co-authors included high school students, undergraduate and graduate students, and community members. (See News Story)

In mentoring, Yang follows several goals:

1. To be honest to the unique needs and interests of each student. 
2. To facilitate intellectual independence. 
3. To learn from his students. 

Highly honored by his peers and students, Yang received the 2017 Eleanor and Harry Walker Academic Advising Award from CA&ES. In 2018, he received the regional (Pacific Region 9, California, Nevada and Hawaii) Outstanding Faculty Academic Advisor from NACADA, also known as the Global Community for Academic Advising, and then went on to win NACADA's international award for the Outstanding Faculty Academic Advising Award.  

Yang writes on his website: "As a lab, we work to maintain an open, supportive and encouraging environment to do good science. We are open to multiple research areas and approaches, and encourage students and postdocs to develop their own innovative ideas and creative questions along the way. Our lab values straightforward communication, intellectual independence, determined problem-solving, constructive persistence, helpfulness, integrity, humility and humor. Although we aim to maintain a small lab group, we always welcome inquiries from prospective graduate students, postdocs and undergraduates. If you are interested in joining the lab, please send an email to Louie H. Yang at lhyang@ucdavis.edu."

The complete list of 2023 PBESA winners is posted here. The archived list of mentoring award recipients dates back to 2012 and includes UC Davis forensic entomologist Robert Kimsey, who won in 2020 and UC Davis distinguished professor Jay Rosenheim, the 2018 recipient.

If you ask honey bee geneticist Robert E. Page Jr. what his favorite honey is, he'll point to his wife, Michelle.

She--and any others near them--will smile every time!

Fact is, Rob Page is our favorite honey bee geneticist, and he was just named the recipient of the 2023 C. W. Woodworth Award, the highest honor accorded by the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America (PBESA). 

It's an honor well deserved. And a honey of an award.

“Dr. Page is a pioneering researcher in the field of evolutionary genetics and social behavior of honey bees, and a highly respected and quoted author, teacher and former administrator,” wrote nominator Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology. 

Page is the 12th UC Davis recipient of the award, first presented in 1969. His mentor, and later colleague, Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. (for whom the UC Davis bee biology research facility is named), won the award in 1981.

The PBESA awards ceremony will take place at its meeting, April 2-5, in Seattle. The organization encompasses 11 Western states, and parts of Canada, Mexico and U.S. territories. 

“One of Dr. Page's most salient contributions to science was to construct the first genomic map of the honey bee, which sparked a variety of pioneering contributions not only to insect biology but to genetics at large,” Nadler related. “It was the first genetic map of any social insect. He was the first to demonstrate that a significant amount of observed behavioral variation among honey bee workers is due to genotypic variation. In the 1990s, he and his students and colleagues isolated, characterized and validated the complementary sex determination gene of the honey bee; considered the most important paper yet published about the genetics of Hymenoptera. The journal Cell featured their work on its cover. In subsequent studies, he and his team published further research into the regulation of honey bee foraging, defensive and alarm behavior.” 

A native of Bakersfield, Rob holds a bachelor's degree in entomology (1976), with a minor in chemistry, from San Jose State University. He obtained his doctorate in entomology (1980) from UC Davis; joined the UC Davis faculty in 1989; and chaired the Department of Entomology from 1999 to 2004. He gained UC Davis emeritus professor-chair status in 2004,  the year that Arizona State University (ASU) recruited him to be the founding director of its School of Life Sciences. Page organized three departments—biology, microbiology and botany, totaling more than 600 faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff--into one unified school. Using his UC Davis experiences, he established the school as a platform for discovery in the biomedical, genomic and evolutionary and environmental sciences; and established ASU's world-class Social Insect Research Group and Honey Bee Research Facility.

Page's career at ASU led to a series of top-level administrative roles: founding director, School of Life Sciences (2004-2010), vice provost and dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2011-2013) and university provost, 2014-2015.

Nadler praised Page's strategic vision, his leadership and his contributions to science.  He built two modern apicultural labs (in Ohio and Arizona), major legacies that are centers of honey bee research and training. The Social Insect Research Group (SIRG) at ASU is regarded as “the best in the world,” according to the late E. O. Wilson. ASU Professor Bert Hoelldobler, in an ASU news release, declared Dr. Page  as "the leading honey bee geneticist in the world. A number of now well-known scientists in the U.S. and Europe learned the ropes of sociogenetics in Rob's laboratory.”

Page is an Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) highly-cited author in plant and animal science. In all, he has published more than 250 research papers and articles, edited or authored five books, and is listed as a “highly-cited author” by the ISI Web of Knowledge, representing the top 1/2 of one percent of publishing scientists. Statistics include: H-index = 80, and 21,925 citations.  Since retiring from UC Davis, Dr. Page has published 65 research papers, 8 major reviews and 2 scholarly books, many using his UC Davis affiliation. He authored “The Spirit of the Hive: The Mechanisms of Social Evolution” (Harvard University Press, 2013) and the “Art of the Bee: Shaping the Environment from Landscapes to Societies” (Oxford University Press, 2020). 

While at UC Davis, Page worked closely with Harry H. Laidlaw Jr., the father of honey bee genetics, and together they published many significant research papers and the landmark book, “Queen Rearing and Bee Breeding” (Wicwas Press, 1998). It is considered the most important resource book for honey bee genetics, breeding, and queen rearing.  Page is now in the process of updating it.

For 24 years, from 1989 to 2015, Page maintained a honey bee-breeding program, managed by bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk. Their contributions include discovering a link between social behavior and maternal traits in bees. Their work was featured in a cover story in the journal Nature. In all, Nature featured his work on four covers from work mostly done at UC Davis.

A 2012 Fellow of the Entomological Society of America, Page has held national and international offices. He served as secretary, chair-elect, chair, subsection cb (apiculture and social insects) of ESA from 1986-1989; president of the North American Section, International Union for the Study of Social Insects, 1991; and a Council member, International Bee Research Association, 1995-2000.

Among his many honors: 

• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Awardee of the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (the Humboldt Prize - the highest honor given by the German government to foreign scientists)
• Foreign Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Elected to the Leopoldina - the German National Academy of Sciences (the longest continuing academy in the world)
• Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
• Fellow of the Entomological Society of America
• Awardee of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Fellowship
• Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences
• Fellow, Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation, Munich, Germany, September 2017-August
• Thomas and Nina Leigh Distinguished Alumni Award from UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology
• James Creasman Award of Excellence (ASU Alumni Association)
• UC Davis Distinguished Emeritus Professor, one awarded annually
• Distinguished Emeritus Award, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, one awarded annually

In his letter of support, colleague and research collaborator James R. Carey, distinguished professor of entomology at UC Davis,  described Page as "one of the most gifted scientists, administrators, and teachers I have had the privilege to know in my 42 years in academia.”

Bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey of Washington State University, former manager of the Laidlaw facility, emphasized Page's importance to the bee breeding and beekeeping industry. Cobey, who has based her career on the Page-Laidlaw Closed Population Breeding, wrote that: “The beauty of this system is that it is practical and addresses the unique challenges of honey bee stock improvement. Queens mate in flight with numerous drones and selection is based upon complex behaviors at the colony level, influenced by the environmental. Hence, traditional animal breeding models do not apply well to honey bees.”

Nadler also noted that “Dr. Page was involved in genome mappings of bumble bees, parasitic wasps and two species of ants. His most recent work focuses on the genetic bases of individuality in honey bees; demonstrating genetic links between pollen and nectar collection, tactile and olfactory learning characteristics, and neuroendocrine function. This work provides the most detailed understanding to date of the molecular and genetic bases to task variation in a social insect colony.” 

Nadler added: "Not surprisingly, Dr. Page humbly considers his most far-reaching and important accomplishment, the success of his mentees, including at least 25 graduate students and postdocs who are now faculty members at leading research institutions around the world."

Charles William Woodworth (1865-1940), is considered the founder of both the UC Berkeley and UC Davis departments of entomology.  William Harry Lange Jr., (1912-2004) was the first UC Davis recipient of the Woodworth award (1978). Other recipients: Harry Laidlaw Jr., (1907-2003), 1981; Robert Washino, 1987; Thomas Leigh (1923-1993), 1991; Harry Kaya, 1998; Charles Summers, (1941-2021), 2009; Walter Leal, 2010; Frank Zalom, 2011; James R. Carey, 2014; Thomas Scott, 2015; and Lynn Kimsey, 2020.

Joining Rob Page in the 2023 PBESA winners' circle from UC Davis: community ecologist Louie Yang, professor, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, recipient of the Distinction in Student Mentoring Award; and UC Davis student Gary Ge, of the UC Davis Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology, who won the second annual Dr. Stephen Garczynski Undergraduate Research Scholarship. 

The complete list of this year's PBESA recipients is posted here. 

Breaking news: UC Davis entomologists won three of the 12 student and professional awards given by the Pacific Branch, Entomological Society of America.

The award-winning trio: 

• Medical entomologist-geneticist Geoffrey Attardo received the Medical, Urban, and Veterinary Entomology Award. (See news story)
• Doctoral student Erin Taylor Kelly of the Attardo lab won the Student Leadership Award (See news story)
• Undergraduate entomology student Gwen Erdosh of the Louie Yang lab and a member of the Research Scholars Program in Insect Biology, won the inaugural Dr. Stephen Garczynski Undergraduate Research Scholarship (See news story)

And another UC Davis connection: community ecologist Erin Wilson Rankin, associate professor at UC Riverside and a former postdoctoral researcher in the Louie Yang lab in 2010, received the Distinguished Teaching Award and will now represent PBESA in the national competition. Professor Yang is also known for his outstanding mentoring and teaching; in 2018, he received an international award for his outstanding academic advising activities.

Rankin says her research "focuses on investigating species interactions and their effects on trophic dynamics and ecosystem services within the contexts of invasion biology, community ecology and evolutionary ecology." She received her bachelor's degree in biology in 2002 from Georgetown University, Washington, DC, and obtained her doctorate in biological sciences from UC San Diego in 2009. Then it was off to UC Davis for a year in the Yang lab before accepting a position as postdoctoral researcher with the University of Maryland's Department of Entomology.  Rankin joined the UC Riverside faculty in 2013 as an assistant professor and advanced to associate professor in 2019.

In 2021 Rankin was named the recipient of two major awards: the Outstanding Faculty Mentor and the Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award. See her research and publications on her website.

Rankin's award was one of five awarded to UC Riverside entomologists: 

• Mark Hoddle won the C. W. Woodworth Award
• Jessica Purcell, Distinction in Student Mentoring Award
• Dong-Hwan Choe, Distinguished Achievement in Extension Award
• Kerry Mauck, Plant-Insect Ecosystems Award

Results showed UC entomologists (from the two campuses) winning a total of eight awards, and USDA, four. (See the chart below) Congratulations, all!

Pacific Branch. The Pacific branch encompasses 11 Western states, parts of Canada and Mexico and several U.S. territories.

In the United States: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawai, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming

U.S. Territories: American Samoa, the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Johnston Atoll, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Midway Islands, Wake Island

In Canada: Alberta, British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, Yukon

In Mexico: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Sinaloa, Sonora

ESA, founded in 1889, is the world's largest organization serving the professional and scientific needs of entomologists and individuals in related disciplines. Its 7,000 members are affiliated with educational institutions, health agencies, private industry, and government. They are researchers, teachers, extension service personnel, administrators, marketing representatives, research technicians, consultants, students, pest management professionals, and hobbyists.