Tuesday, March 4 – 3:00 p.m. | Sunset 4
Wednesday, March 5 – 1:15 p.m. | Sunset 5
Session Organizer: Shannah Whithaus
Senior Editor, Pesticide Safety Education, University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, USA
Are you exploring your career options or interested in changing careers? If so, this session is for you! Join a group of seasoned IPM professionals representing private industry, universities, and non-governmental organizations to explore the variety of career paths available within the world of Integrated Pest Management. Session activities will help you meet influential people and learn about interesting and fulfilling careers that you may not have considered. For instance, have you always wanted to write educational materials, develop new IPM products, improve the efficacy of IPM programs, or help people understand how to mitigate risks while applying pesticides? There are so many possible career paths for IPM practitioners and researchers working in IPM-related disciplines. So don’t miss this informal meet-and-greet session – you might just discover the career of your dreams!
Daniel earned his B.S. in Biology from Utah State University, an M.S. in Entomology from the University of Florida, and a Ph.D. in Entomology from Virginia Tech. He worked with the USDA-ARS for two years as a postdoctoral research entomologist and spent seven years at West Virginia University as an Extension Entomologist, where he achieved the rank of Associate Professor. Currently, Daniel serves as the Director of Virginia Tech Pesticide Programs, providing leadership for Extension programming in integrated pest management (IPM), pesticide safety education, and youth entomology education and outreach. His primary focus areas include: 1) coordination of IPM activities under the USDA NIFA Extension Implementation Program, 2) management of statewide pesticide applicator training programs, 3) development and dissemination of training media, educational materials, and other resources for extension agents, pesticide applicators, pesticide businesses, and consumers, and 4) Serving as a resource consultant for university Extension personnel and other stakeholder groups on pesticide safety education and policy. In this role, Daniel also acts as a liaison between Virginia Tech, Virginia Cooperative Extension, and state and federal officials regarding pesticide use, policies, regulations, and emerging issues.
Dr. Wayne Buhler is a Professor and Pesticide Safety Extension Specialist in the Department of Horticultural Science at NC State University, Raleigh, NC. For the past 26 years, Wayne has served as the statewide coordinator of the North Carolina Pesticide Safety Education Program (PSEP). He develops the educational materials used for certifying and recertifying private applicators, commercial applicators, and dealers of restricted-use pesticides. In addition to direct participation in certification education training sessions, he instructs Extension Agents on methods for delivering recertification programs at the county level. The PSEP provides training and continuing education for approximately 14,000 private applicators, 22,000 commercial applicators, and 600 pesticide dealers. Wayne has graduate degrees in Entomology from Purdue University.
Miles has had a lifetime passion and love for insects and has been working in agricultural conservation for 7 years, helping farmers implement best management practices and pollinator habitat. He holds a Master’s in Entomology from UC Davis, where he studied navel orangeworm management in pistachios and almonds. Miles works directly with commodity groups, brands, retailers, and farmers, to encourage voluntary pollinator programs.
Bio: Tunyalee Martin is the Associate Director for Communications with the Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM). She leads the team that develops outreach projects for print and the web that show urban and agricultural users how to solve pest problems. Tunyalee received her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Entomology from UC Davis where she specialized in pest management and insect physiology. Previously, she worked as UC IPM’s content management supervisor for 6 years. Prior to joining UC IPM, she worked briefly as an analyst at University of California’s Office of the President, and has writing, research and teaching experience working for The Nature Conservancy’s Invasive Species Team, California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Biological Control Program, San Francisco State University, and Sacramento State.
Amara Dunn-Silver studied plant pathology in grad school (MS and PhD) and spent two years teaching in the biology department of a small liberal arts college before joining the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program at Cornell University in 2017 as the Biocontrol Specialist. In this position she supports the effective use of biological control solutions to pests in all agricultural commodities, as well as pests encountered by New Yorkers where they live, work, play, and learn. Her responsibilities in this non-tenure-track faculty position are primarily extension, with a little bit of applied research. She has enjoyed exploring how pedagogical principles for classroom instruction inform teaching adult learners in non-classroom settings (extension).
In her current capacity, Africa manages and administers the ITCA Pesticide Enforcement and Worker Safety Program. She provides technical assistance, pesticide inspection guidance, outreach and training to tribal environmental and agricultural staff in Pesticide Safety, Worker Protection Standard, and Integrated Pest Management Practices. Africa is a FIFRA (Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, Rodenticide Act) inspector on behalf of EPA, Region 9. She is fluent in both English and Spanish, is an AZ State Pesticide Safety Certified Trainer; therefore, provides WPS/Pesticide Safety trainings to workers and handlers of agricultural establishments on tribal lands, and provides translation services when needed to Tribes when conducting WPS inspections, providing outreach materials to community members or the migrant community Africa is the Regional Tribal Operations Committee, Pesticide Workgroup Lean (for R9 Tribes) and serves on additional pesticide related planning committees, such as the Pesticide Residential Education Program (PREP) Committee, Pesticide Inspector Residential Training (PIRT), Western IPM and other steering committees to ensure that tribal priorities, topics and challenges within their pesticide programs are addressed and tribes have opportunities to attend such trainings.
As the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program’s fruit IPM coordinator, Anna develops research-based, sustainable IPM strategies and increases farmer and producer engagement through extension and outreach. She holds bachelor’s degrees in biology and music from the University of Maryland, and a doctorate in Plant Pathology and Plant Microbe Biology from Cornell University, where she worked with Professor Kerik Cox on research and extension efforts focused on investigating fire blight and identifying sustainable management solutions.
Michael Rozyne is founder of Red Tomato, a regional food hub based in Providence, RI that sources from 40 mid-sized fruit and vegetable farms, and distributes primarily to supermarkets, as well as institutions such as schools, hospitals and food banks. RT’s signature program is EcoCertified™, based on advanced IPM practices, verifying local and sustainably grown apples and peaches. He is manager of the Farming & Food Narrative Project, a social science research project aimed at effective communications with a public audience. In 1986, Rozyne co-founded the fair-trade food company Equal Exchange, a worker-owned cooperative.
Shannah Whithaus is a writer and educator who enjoys making scientific and technical information accessible to more general audiences. She is especially interested in creating publications that help people learn and remember complex technical information on their own. Shannah has revised many of the University of California’s Compendium Series study guides for pesticide applicators, including The Safe and Effective Use of Pesticides, Soil Fumigation, and Residential, Industrial, and Institutional Pest Control, among others. She has also written item pools and compiled exams for nearly all existing Qualified Applicator certification categories, as well as for many Pest Control Advisor licensing categories.
Jim Farrar Ph.D. is the director of the University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM). UC IPM focuses on practical IPM solutions to address important pest issues in agriculture, communities, and natural areas in California. Previously, Farrar was director of the Western IPM Center and prior to that he was a professor of plant pathology in the Department of Plant Science at California State University, Fresno.
Dr. Shimon Steinberg, Entomologist, holds a B.Sc. in Biology from Tel Aviv University and a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in agronomy and plant protection from the Department of agriculture at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Dr. Steinberg was also a Postdoc scholar with the Wageningen Agricultural University of the Netherlands. He is the head of R&D at BioBee Sde Eliyahu Ltd. for nearly three decades where he specializes in developing systems for mass rearing and field application of beneficial arthropods (insects and mites) for biological pest control, pollination and recently for feed and food.
Mike is the Program Leader for Cornell’s pesticide safety education program, a part of the New York State Integrated Pest Management (NYSIPM) Program. Administrative responsibilities include leading a group of five staff members, securing outside funding where appropriate, serving as the primary contact for the program, and providing input to the NYSIPM director on future directions of PSEP. In addition to administrative responsibilities, Mike also oversees the publication and review Cornell’s Crop and Pest Management Guideline series, conducts Extension educational programs on pesticide-use related topics, overseeing PSEP’s special registration program, and coordinating PSEP’s online Distance Learning Center that provides online recertification training. Additionally, Mike’s authored pesticide applicator training manuals for the commercial aquatic and agricultural plant categories as well as the private fruit category in New York State. Prior to joining PSEP nearly 25 years ago, Mike worked with Cornell Cooperative Extension’s spray application technology specialist on engineering controls for safer spraying and on effective spraying. He’s also involved with the American Association of Pesticide Safety Educators (AAPSE), currently serving as a Northeast representative to the Board of Directors and previously was chair of the association’s Professional Development Committee. Mike holds an Associate’s degree from SUNY Morrisville in Agricultural Engineering Technology, a Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in Agricultural and Biological Engineering (environmental systems technology concentration), and a professional Master’s degree from Cornell University in agriculture and life sciences (horticulture).
Susannah Krysko, MS, was the program manager for the Northeastern IPM Center’s StopPests in Housing Program at Cornell University from 2014 to 2023. With funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Susannah provided integrated pest management (IPM) training and technical assistance to hundreds of affordable housing providers nationwide and served as HUD’s pest management consultant. Currently, she is a community IPM specialist with the New York State IPM Program, promoting IPM in housing, schools, health departments, and community organizations. She holds a BS from SUNY Geneseo, an MS in Sustainable Systems from Slippery Rock University, and continued her education in entomology at Cornell University. For over 20 years Susannah has worked in cooperative extension sharing research-based information with the public on safe and effective pest management strategies for homes, yards, and gardens.
Belinda Messenger-Sikes has worked as the urban writer/editor for the UC Statewide IPM Program since 2017. She works on the peer-reviewed Pest Notes publications as well as the Urban IPM Program’s newsletters, blogs, videos, and other materials. She holds a Ph.D. in plant pathology from UC Riverside. Her dissertation studied the use of calcium soil amendments for control of Phytophthora root rot of avocado. After graduating, she worked
as a mycologist in the discovery section of AgraQuest, a biopesticide company in Davis. In 2000, she joined the pest management program at the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, where she worked in both urban and agricultural IPM. She initiated the school and child care IPM program and worked as the child care IPM specialist for eight years. She specialized in outreach and education of school staff and child care providers, introducing new users to the concepts and practices of IPM.
Steve Elliott is the communication coordinator for the Western IPM Center, where he has labored since 2013 to make integrated pest management more accessible, understandable and embraceable. A journalist by temperament and training, Steve earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and worked for various California newspapers before beginning his own communications firm in the early 2000s. His how-to book for young adults, The Portable Dad: Fix-it Advice for when Dad’s Not Around, was published in 2009. He persists in a Quixotic crusade against the use of acronyms, jargon and unnecessary Latin in IPM communications, and can still recite the 23 helping verbs he learned in the sixth grade.
Cheryl Reynolds is a writer/editor for the University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program. In the last 14 of her almost 30 years with the program, she has designed and developed interactive online courses for pest management professionals, K-12 school staff, and home residents. She has worked with several authoring software products as well as video and audio editing programs. Cheryl is committed to keeping up to date with current law and accessibility guidelines while incorporating these elements into course design to provide all learners with an equitable learning experience. Cheryl is also responsible for maintaining more than 20 online courses on a Learning Management System (LMS) and helping learners navigate through as issues arise.
Elyssa Arnold is the Ecological Risk Assessor and Endangered Species Act lead in USDA’s Office of Pest Management Policy (OPMP). OPMP was founded in 1998 to represent the needs of growers in the pesticide regulatory process. OPMP also coordinates within USDA and across federal agencies on pesticide policy issues. Prior to working at USDA, Elyssa spent 10 years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Office of Pesticide Programs. She earned her MPH from the Yale School of Public Health and her MEM from the Yale School of the Environment, both with concentrations in environmental health. She earned her BA in Environmental Studies from Dartmouth College.
Senior-level public policy director with a track record of success in key roles at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with the U.S. Congress, and in the nonprofit arena. Significant substantive expertise in all aspects of agriculture, food, conservation, and biotechnology
policy, with a vast and diverse network of professional contacts in these fields. Adept at bringing together stakeholders with diverging interests and negotiating compromises among them. Strong skills in policy development and project implementation, as well as team development, personnel management, stakeholder outreach, and crisis management.
Dr. Youichi Kobori has been conducting research to become an IPM practitioner since he was a graduate student. When he was a graduate student at Chiba University, Japan, from 1999 to 2003, he showed the relationship between the mortality rate of diamondback moths and rainfall by the logistic model. In addition, he conducted research that evaluated the side effects of insecticides on the parasitoids of aphids, including sublethal toxicity. During his postdoctoral studies at Chiba University and the National Agricultural Research Center Japan from 2003 to 2007, he continued his study to evaluate the side effects of insecticides against several biocontrol agents. He also developed a rearing method and container for natural enemies of spider mites, which was patented in Japan. In 2007, he was employed as a postdoctoral and fixed-term researcher at the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS). Since 2011, he has been a principal researcher of JIRCAS. He developed an IPM for sugarcane white leaf disease, a severe limiting factor on sugarcane production in Southeast Asia, collaborating with local research institutes and collaborators. The results were published as a manual in Thai and English languages. In addition, he supervised many graduate students in the IPM area and participated in the degree examination at the Faculty of Agriculture, Khon Kaen University. Also, Dr. Kobori lectures on statistics and other subjects required for developing effective IPM strategies. Since 2021, he manages the research as a project leader of the “transboundary pest management” and conducts research in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia to establish an IPM for the fall armyworm and rice planthoppers.
Jasmin, PSEP coordinator for the UC IPM Statewide Program, is responsible for developing, implementing, and delivering educational programs and materials on the safe, responsible, and effective use of pesticides to pesticide applicators across California. Jasmin earned a B.S. in Earth Systems Science from UC Merced in 2016 and an M.Sc. in Entomology from UC Davis in 2022. She is passionate about extension work, particularly community and adult education, and promoting objective information about pesticide safety. In her role, Jasmin collaborates with regulatory agencies to ensure that educational content complies with federal and state laws. She also works alongside community partners and UC ANR colleagues to promote sound decision-making to reduce pesticide risks to human health and the environment.
