{"id":151816,"date":"2021-11-16T16:04:48","date_gmt":"2021-11-17T02:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=151816"},"modified":"2021-11-16T16:27:48","modified_gmt":"2021-11-17T02:27:48","slug":"entomology-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2021\/11\/16\/entomology-championship\/","title":{"rendered":"Big bug win! Student team takes national title"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>
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From left, Kenneth Choi, Karim Gharbi, Michelle Au and Mitchell Kirsch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A team of students from the University of Hawaiʻi<\/span> at Mānoa won the national championship at the Entomology Games Competition<\/a> at the National Meeting of the Entomological Society of America (ESA<\/abbr>), held in-person in Denver, October 31–November 2.<\/p>\n

Karim Gharbi<\/strong>, Mitchell Kirsch<\/strong>, Michelle Au<\/strong>, Kenneth Choi<\/strong> and faculty coach Mark Wright<\/strong> comprise the 东精影业<\/abbr> Entomology Games team, also known as Ka Mea Kolo. The team represented the Entomology Graduate Program in the Department of Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences<\/a> for the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources<\/a> (CTAHR<\/abbr>).<\/p>\n

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Department of Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To reach the finals, the CTAHR<\/abbr> team first had to qualify at the ESA<\/abbr>\u2019s Pacific Branch Meeting, held virtually in March. They matched wits with a number of West Coast teams, losing to former champ University of California Riverside, but beating everyone else and thereby qualifying for the finals. <\/p>\n

In Denver, they overcame that loss, first by beating the Rutgers University team in the preliminary rounds, then by stomping UC<\/abbr> Riverside 80 to 20 in the first round of the finals. In the championship round, Ka Mea Kolo faced off against Texas A&M, a two-time winner and multiple finals appearance university. 东精影业<\/abbr> dominated Texas A&M, 110 to 45.<\/p>\n

“This is the first time the University of Hawaiʻi<\/span> has won this competition and it reflects the hard work, skill and dedication of our students and their coach, Mark Wright<\/strong>,” said Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences Professor Dan Rubinoff<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

“They beat the giants convincingly,” added Wright. “Not bad for a small program! I\u2019m proud of our students; they worked hard for this. In addition to being a great accomplishment for students, this brings considerable attention to UH and CTAHR, and raises our national profile quite nicely.”<\/p>\n

The team members are all graduate students in the entomology labs at CTAHR<\/abbr>. Kirsch also won Best Poster in the Medical, Urban, and Veterinary Entomology category. Funding to help cover the students\u2019 travel came from the Tanada Family Entomology Fund<\/a> and CTAHR New Faculty Start-Up Fund.<\/p>\n

This effort\/work\/program\/research\/outreach\/event is an example of UH M\u0101noa\u2019s goal of Enhancing Student Success<\/a> (PDF<\/abbr><\/span>), one of four goals identified in the 2015–25 Strategic Plan<\/a> (PDF<\/abbr><\/span>), updated in December 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

东精影业 M\u0101noa graduate students earn a national championship in entomology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[212,364,1466,359,9],"class_list":["post-151816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-news","tag-college-of-tropical-agriculture-and-human-resilience","tag-entomology","tag-manoa-enhancing-student-success","tag-plant-and-environmental-protection-sciences","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151816"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151851,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151816\/revisions\/151851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}