The Department of Entomology would like to congratulate the 14 students that are expected to graduate during commencement exercises at Reed Arena on Friday, May 11.

These students joined more than 1,200 students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences during the 9am ceremony.

Congratulations and good luck on your futures!!

Calli Regan Allison	Forensic and Investigative Sciences- Law Emphasis
Elizabeth Katelyn Lankford	Forensic and Investigative Sciences- Law Emphasis, Sociology/Psychology minor
Milagros Pacchioni	Forensic and Investigative Sciences- Law Emphasis
Brice Peyton Phillips	Forensic and Investigative Sciences- Law Emphasis
Austin Cole Schonfield	Forensic and Investigative Sciences- Law Emphasis
Jeremy Arnold	Forensic and Investigative Sciences- Science Emphasis and Psychology
Andrew James Baxter	Forensic and Investigative Sciences- Science Emphasis and Chemistry
Mya Renee Gates	Forensic and Investigative Sciences- Science Emphasis
Abby Kimpton Jones	Forensic and Investigative Sciences- Science Emphasis and Entomology
Michelle Jonika	Forensic and Investigative Sciences- Science Emphasis, Genetics minor
Maximilian Clifford Kirking	Forensic and Investigative Sciences- Science Emphasis
Kambrie Nicole Kissmann	Forensic and Investigative Sciences- Science Emphasis
Katelyn Nicole McLeod	Forensic and Investigative Sciences- Science Emphasis
Ava Kendal Moyer	Forensic and Investigative Sciences- Science Emphasis

Twenty-one students from the Forensic and Investigative Sciences program and the Aggie Forensic and Investigative Science Organization gave back to the local community during the 36^th annual The Big Event.

The students were part of more than 20,000 Aggies that were sent out in the community in the nation’s largest single-day community service project on March 24.

The three groups of students spent most of the morning working various tasks at three different locations in both Bryan and College Station. Some of the work they did included raking leaves, staining a fence, cleaning out yards of brush, and moving furniture.

Junior Forensics major Brittany Gerich was helping the residents at the Pleasant Forest location in College Station, where the first group of students took care of raking leaves and cleaning gutters.

“It was a lot of fun,” Gerich said. “I like volunteering in general and is a cool way to help the community.”

Kiara Dietze was very excited about volunteering at the home on Melba Drive and loved helping others as well as making a difference in the community.

“I think it’s a great thing they are doing,” freshman FIVS major Kiara Dietze said. “I love helping people in general and this is a great event to volunteer at.”

This was AFIS activities coordinator Skylar Huddleston’s first time volunteering at the event.

“I think The Big Event has always be a good way to bring the community together as a whole,” Huddleston said. “Being able to see people from all aspects of the world come together is really awesome. Because of this, I couldn’t wait to volunteer!”

Huddleston added she loved helping the homeowners and that it’s also a great way for her to meet and give back to the community.  “For me, helping the

community is an amazing opportunity,” she said. “It really brings people together in ways you might not typically see. It helps build up a strong connection throughout.”

The Department of Entomology and the Forensic and Investigative Sciences program would like to congratulate senior Forensic and Investigative Sciences major Michelle Jonika as she received the 2018 Senior Merit Award from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Jonika received the award during the annual Spring Convocation that was held in the John G. Hildebrand Equestrian Center on Saturday, April 14.

A native of Magnolia, Jonika currently works in Dr. Aaron Tarone’s lab on her undergraduate research thesis titled “Genes as Markers of Sex for Forensic Entomology.” She also has worked in the Gastrointestinal Laboratory at Texas A&M, researching the effects of antibiotics on the microbiome of companion animals.

Since her undergraduate career, Jonika has presented her research at different events including Texas A&M’s Student Research Week in 2017 and 2018, as well as during an internship at the Department of Homeland Security in August of 2017.

Jonika also has been a mentor for both the Aggie Forensic and Investigative Sciences Mentor Program and Aggies Reaching Out. As a mentor in the AFIS Mentor program, Jonika led a small group of FIVS majors through their transition into college, where she gave advice about college and surviving the first years of the program. With Aggies Reaching Out, Jonika tutored and mentored students in the area and helped them realize their potential and showed them the opportunities they have to attend college.

Jonika also was a member of the Resurgimus Cineribus and a counselor for Fish Camp, as well as the Kappa Phi sorority. She also has won several awards, including the Sigma Xi STEM Award in 2018, second place at the 2017 Student Research Week and first place poster in the 2018 Student Research Week, and the Distinguished Student Award in fall of 2017.

“I am really honored to receive such an incredible distinction from the College,” Jonika said.  “It means a lot!”

Congratulations to senior Forensic and Investigative Sciences major Abby Jones as she received second place at the  Ecological Integration Symposium on April 5-6

Jones was awarded second place in the undergraduate student oral presentation category for her talk titled “Mass mortality events in relation to carrion ecology and forensic entomology: emphasizing taxonomic resolution.”

Jones’ mentor Dr. Jeff Tomberlin was very proud of her hard work and dedication to her project.

“Abby has been working in my lab for well over 1.5 years,” Tomberlin said. “I have really enjoyed watching her grow as a student and researcher. Her success at the EIS is a demonstration of her hard work and commitment to research.”

This year’s Student Research Week went very well for senior Michelle Jonika as she received two awards for her excellence in research during the student run research symposium held the week of March 19-23.

Jonika, a senior Forensic and Investigative Sciences major, received first place in the Undergraduate Agriculture and Life Sciences Category and the Sigma Xi STEM Award during the awards and closing ceremony that was held on Friday, March 23 in the Memorial Student Center.

Jonika received first place for undergraduate student in the Agriculture and Life Sciences category for her poster titled “Development of Mass Spectral Database Using Direct Analysis in Real Time.” Her poster was an end result of research she had conducted when  she was a summer intern in 2017 at the Department of Homeland Security.

Her research project looks at using direct analysis in real time, or DART, mass spectrometry on collected samples of controlled substances.

Jonika said the DART process allows for faster analysis of the samples with little to no preparation, which allows for more efficiency in processing. She has taken this a step further in creating a database that was tailored for the US Customs and Border Patrol to help reduce the backlog of controlled substance samples within the agency’s laboratories.

“It felt really great seeing all my time and hard work I put into my research pay off,” Jonika said. “It was also exciting to receive the Sigma Xi STEM award for having innovative research within the field of STEM.”

She is currently working with Dr. Aaron Tarone’s lab on her thesis titled “Genes as Markers of Sex for Forensic Entomology.” Tarone said he was very proud of her accomplishments.

“Michelle has worked very hard in my lab on a project to molecularly identify male and female flies.  This is important in forensic entomology as we know some insects can exhibit sexual dimorphism in the traits forensic entomologists use to estimate insect age,” Tarone said. “However, sexual dimorphism is poorly understood in forensically relevant taxa; in part because this cannot be done morphologically and there are currently few tools to do so molecularly.  She has done an excellent, and self-motivated, job of developing tools that our lab and colleagues can use to determine the sexes of immature blow flies.”