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June 29, 2001
CONTACT: Linda McCandless, llm3@cornell.edu, 315-787-2417
by Peter Seem
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GENEVA, NY: By this time last year, 10 Cornell University graduate students at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station had won $18,000 worth of travel grants, scholarships, fellowships and awards. This year 12 Experiment Station students-Jill Richardson, Shannon Olsson, Jeremy Pattison, Renan Bu-Contreras, Paul Robbins, Andrea Ficke, Lisa Emele Hoffman, Cynthia Hsu, Torey Arvik, Elizabeth Goulet, Fred Musser, Kristine Gerard and Trevor Gentry-won over $48,000.
Kristine Gerard and Trevor Gentry each won an Arthur Boeller Apple Research Grant for $675. Both work with John Roberts in the department of food science and technology (FS&T). Gerard also won a Herzog Memorial Scholarship for $1000. Torey Arvik, who works with Thomas Henick-Kling in F&T, won the Herzog Award for Achievement in Food Science and the American Society of Enology and Viticulture Merit Scholarship for 2001.
Also from food science, Renan Bu-Contreras won the Goya Foods Prize worth $250. "He studies the factors that influence the firmness of potatoes and apples, which are two of the most important crops in New York State and the US," said Andy Rao, his advisor. Jill Richardson, who works with Terry Acree and Thomas Henick-Kling, won the $250 Downing Graduate Student award given for leadership among students and excellence in food science.
Next year's Paul J. Chapman Graduate Student Fellowship Award in Entomology went to Shannon Olsson, in Wendell Roelofs' lab-a fellowship that is worth $28,815.
In the department of entomology, two of Tony Shelton's graduate students won awards. Fred Musser won $2,550 for his project, "The role of natural enemies in sweet corn insect control," from New York State Integrated Pest Management program, and $5,000 for "Evaluation of Narrow-Spectrum Insecticides on Pests and Natural Enemies in Sweet Corn," funded by the New York Vegetable Research Association.
Elizabeth Goulet received a Mellon award worth $1,200 from Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Science (CALS) and a $1,260 Einaudi award funded by the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development and the Latin American Studies program. She also won a $1,000 Rawlins grant to travel to Honduras and Nicaragua in January and $820 from the G. Burke Wright fund of the International Programs, CALS. Goulet's master's research is on management of the mahogany stem borer and its social and political implications for resource-poor Honduran farmers.
Two other entomologists received honors. Last December, in Montreal, Cynthai Hsu, Art Agnello's graduate student, won second place in the Student Paper Competition at the Entomological Society of America's Annual Meeting. For the second year, Paul Robbins, who is earning his Ph.D. through the Employee Degree Program, was awarded a Rawlins Grant from the department of entomology for travel to Kansas. "These trip resulted in the discovery of two new sex pheromones in the genus Phyllophaga," said Robbins.
On March 9, Jeremy Pattison won the Perrine Scholarship for a student in Pomology worth $2,000. "I am very grateful to the Perrines for such a wonderful funding opportunity. The money is being used to fund some aspects of my research as well as fund transportation and admission costs to berry growing conferences," he said. Pattison studies the inheritance of phytophthora root rot in red raspberry in Courtney Weber's lab in Horticultural Sciences.
The department of plant pathology had two award-winning graduate students. Lisa Emele Hoffman, working with Wanye Wilcox, received $600 to travel to Salt Lake City in August and present a paper at the American Phytopathological Society's Graduate Student Symposium as an I.E. Melhus Speaker. She will speak on "Managing black rot of grape based on disease Epidemiology. Andrea Ficke, in Bob Seem's lab, will also be speaking there as an I.E. Melhus Speaker, presenting her thesis research to the "New Frontiers in Plant Disease Losses and Plant Disease Management" symposium. Again this year Ficke was awarded a $1,200 travel grant from the Mario Einaudi Center to continue her research at the Commonwealth Scientific Institute Research Organization in the University of Adelaide in South Australia. She also won a $1,500 award from the Kaplan Vineyard Research Program for her work on powdery mildew resistance in grapevines.