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Helsinki Bound

Entomology student reports on int’l congress

  • 17 August 2022
  • Author: Mark Berthold
  • Number of views: 1257
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Helsinki Bound

By Mason Russo

As a third-year PhD student in Dr. Zhiqiang Cheng’s Turf and Landscape pest management laboratory, I had the distinct honor of joining Dr. Cheng and my fellow grad student David Honsberger to attend the 26th edition of the International Congress of Entomology in Helsinki, Finland, this past July.

My experiences were captured in the article, “ICE 2022: A Graduate Student’s Perspective,” which appears in a blog of the journal Entomology Today.

With the theme of “Entomology for the Planet,” the meeting brought together entomologists from more than 100 countries to share poster and oral presentations and attend symposia. It also was the official return of in-person interaction at scientific conferences of this magnitude for entomologists.

We CTAHR students were able to present our research to a wide international audience and increase awareness about our projects. During this meeting, I met a potential collaborator from Thailand for a project to find biological control for the hala scale. These connections I made will help me throughout my PhD studies and future career!

Revisiting the theme of “Entomology for the Planet,” the conference addressed many challenges we face with feeding a growing global population, preventing the loss of global biodiversity, the increase in vector-borne disease epidemics, invasive species, and climate change. These questions will require global collaboration and policy changes to mitigate the worst of these threats.

The 2022 meeting in Helsinki was essential to bring back in-person discussion about these topics, and the connections and collaborations that result from meetings like this could cause positive changes for the world. This highlights the need for entomologists and the continuation for scientific discourse at this level. I hope to see this momentum continue for “New Discoveries through Consilience,” the 27th International Congress of Entomology in Kyoto, Japan, which is scheduled to take place in August 2024.

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