OARDC Names Poster Competition Winners

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, the research arm of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences at The Ohio State University, has named the winners of its 2015 research poster competition held April 16 during the center’s annual research conference in Columbus.

The competition, which drew 83 entries, recognized outstanding research posters by OARDC-supported graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and research assistants and associates.

Ph.D. Students

• First place: Kayla I. Perry, Department of Entomology, “Effects of forest disturbance on ground-dwelling invertebrate dispersal”; adviser, Daniel A. Herms.
• Second place: Johnathon P. Sheets, Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, “Effect of limited air exposure and comparative performance between thermophilic and mesophilic solid-state anaerobic digestion of switchgrass”; adviser, Yebo Li.
• Third place: Yin Chen, Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, “Response of grafted glyphosate-resistant and conventional soybean plants to glyphosate”; adviser, Douglas Doohan.

Master’s Degree Students

• First place: Rachel Medina, Department of Plant Pathology, “Examining the role of maize root exudates influence on soybean cyst nematode hatching”; adviser, Christopher G. Taylor.
• Second place: Carlos J. Esquivel Palma, Department of Entomology, “Physiological and biochemical assays confirm a functional transition in the Malpighian tubules after a blood meal in the invasive Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus”; adviser, Peter Piermarini.
• Third place: Rodney T. Richardson, Department of Entomology, “Rank-based inference of pollen type abundance using a multi-locus metabarcoding approach”; adviser, Reed Johnson.

Postdoctoral Researchers

• First place: Xiaofeng Zhuang, Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, “Development of EST-derived single nucleotide polymorphism markers using RNA-seq in Taraxacum kok-saghyz”; adviser, Katrina Cornish.
• Second place: Wenshuang Xie, Department of Plant Pathology, “Evaluation of a MYB transcription factor as a visible marker for transgenic plant production”; adviser, Christopher G. Taylor.
• Third place: Chun-Ming Lin, Food Animal Health Research Program, “Generation of attenuated US PEDV vaccine candidates via continuous cell culture passages”; adviser, Quihong Wang.

Research Assistants and Associates

• First place: Revathi Shanmugasundaram, Department of Animal Sciences, “Salmonella enterica serovar Enteritidis modulate intestinal cell signaling responses that activate T regulatory cell functions and mediates persistent infections in chickens”; adviser, Ramesh Selvaraj.
• Second place: Huang-Chi Huang, Food Animal Health Research Program, “Colonization dynamics and effect of human rotavirus infection on defined commensal microflora in a gnotobiotic (Gn) pig model”; adviser, G. Rajashekara.
• Third place: Therese Miller, Department of Plant Pathology, “Survey of Ohio soybean cyst nematode virulence”; adviser, Christopher G. Taylor.

The first-place winners in each category received $500; the second-place winners, $300; the third-place winners, $150.

A list of all the competition participants and their projects is available at go.osu.edu/3UZ.

The main part of the conference program featured 11 speakers on a theme of “Water Quality: Sustaining a Vital Resource” and the presentation of faculty research awards. Details are at go.osu.edu/2015OARDC.

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