For the second time in three years, CTAHR students in the Dept. of Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences won 1st prize in Cobb Bowl Jeopardy at the annual meeting of the Society of Nematologists, held August 4-9 in Park City, UT. Competing as “Aloha Nema,” our super-capable PEPS students 

Congrats to Kyhl Austin, grad student in the Dept. of Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences, who took home Best Student Talk (and a big cash prize!) in the graduate student competition at the North American Meeting of the Lepidopterist’s Society, held at Cornell U. last month.

Congrats times three to Mason Russo, Jordie Ho, and Benjamin Wiseman – all CTAHR PhD students and all recipients of 2024 Scholar Awards from the ARCS Foundation, Honolulu Chapter. Mason wins the Maybelle F. Roth Award in Conservation Biology and the Jane and Dan Katayama ARCS Scholar of the Year Award. 

Please join me in extending the warmest congratulations to our Extension faculty (A and S) who have received recognition from their clients, peers, and the University for their contributions. Because of these individuals, CTAHR Cooperative Extension is improving people’s lives, economies, communities. 

Papaya is an economically significant crop in Hawaiʻi and other tropical and subtropical locales. However, various diseases, drought, and heat stress threaten crop productivity. To improve resistance to these threats, an efficient gene-editing system was developed by graduate student, Marc Elias in the laboratory of David Christopher