Congratulations to the 2019 Canadian PAm-Costco Scholar Fellowship Awardees!

Scholarship: Since 2013, Project Apis m. (PAm) and Costco Wholesale Corporation have collaborated to sponsor a competitive scholarship program for a Ph.D. - level candidate. The purpose of the Costco Scholar Program is to ensure the continuity of honey bee health scientists and specialties in the academic and research world. It also intends to develop and contribute to sustainability of the beekeeping industry and assure its future contributions to agriculture, where many crops depend upon pollination for success. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research-based doctoral degrees in fields within the Project Apis m. mission of enhancing honey bee health while improving crop production.  
 
2019 Canadian Awards: A review panel including PAm Science Advisors, PAm Board Members, Costco Representatives, Past PAm-Costco Scholarship recipients, and PAm Staff carefully reviewed applications and interviewed finalists. Interviews were conducted at Apimondia, 2019 and awards were given to three outstanding candidates who demonstrated exemplary initiative, capacity, innovation, scholastic dedication and skillful communication of honey bee health research. 


Introducing the 2019 Canadian PAm-Costco Scholar:
Courtney MacInnis, University of Alberta
Impact of emerging pathogens on honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) health
Award: $20,000 per year for 3 years, totaling $60,00

Courtney is currently a PhD student in the Department of Biological Sciences at University of Alberta (UofA) and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Beaverlodge Research Farm. She is co-supervised by Drs. Steve Pernal and Lien Luong. Before engaging a PhD program at UofA, she completed a MSc in Ecology at UofA with Drs. Steve Pernal and Andrew Keddie examining the effects of storage temperature and substrate on Nosema ceranae spore survival. 
 
Courtney’s PhD project involves investigating the effects of two emerging parasites, Nosema ceranae and Lotmaria passim on honey bee behavior and physiology. To evaluate these effects she uses a variety of field and lab-based techniques allowing her to ask questions such as: Do these parasites influence age of foraging onset? Do they induce energetic stress? Can they stimulate the honey bee immune system? The long-term goal of her project is to provide the beekeeping industry with basic information regarding the effects of these parasites on honey bee health, and to use this information to determine if management strategies should be implemented.  
 
Introducing 2019 Canadian PAm-Costco Scholar Runner-Up:
Tanushree Tiwari, York University
Improve bee health by identifying genetic markers for innate and social immunity traits in honey bee colonies across Canada
Award: $10,000 

Tanushree is a second year PhD student at Dr. Amro Zayed’s lab at York university, Toronto, Canada. She has done her BSc. and MSc. in Bioinformatics from Banasthali University India. She then worked as bioinformatics project scientist for five years before moving to Canada. After coming to Canada in 2016, Tanushree became fascinated by honey bee biology and was excited to apply her computational biology knowledge in understanding and preventing their declines.
 
Her research is part of the BeeOmics project. In her research Tanushree will identify the genetic markers for innate and social immunity for honey bees across Canada which can be used to improve the health of honeybees. For this, she will be focusing on the pathogens including 5 RNA viruses, Nosema, Lotmaria and Varroa mite loads within colonies. She wants to see how bee genotypes resist infection and how they differ among colonies from different provinces of Canada. These traits in honeybees show considerable levels of heritability and can thus be improved via artificial selection (Marker Assisted Selection (MAS)). She will also characterize the gut microbiota in a subset of colonies to potentially identify markers associated with the diversity and composition of the gut microbiota, and its potential association with pathogen loads within colonies.

Introducing 2019 Canadian PAm-Costco Scholar Runner-Up:
Kathleen Dogantzis, York University
Honey bee (Apis mellifera) evolution and ancestral origin, honey bee adaptation, and detecting invasive Africanized honey bees.
Award: $10,000  

Kathleen is currently a PhD candidate in Dr. Amro Zayed’s lab at York University’s Department of Biology. Kathleen became a graduate student in the Zayad lab in 2015 where she has developed a fondness for honey bees through research and beekeeping experience. Prior to starting her PhD, Kathleen completed a master’s degree in Biology where her research focused on the molecular evolution of eusociality in bees and wasps. Currently, Kathleen’s research broadly focuses on the evolution and adaptation of Apis mellifera subspecies. Her research extends into the field of honey bee health and commercial colony success through the detection of Africanized bees.  Kathleen is currently developing applied genetic tools that can be used to effectively differentiate Africanized bees from commercial colony bees. This test will help to monitor the movement and mitigate the risk for accidental importation of Africanized bees within the beekeeping industry.
 
Project Apis m. thanks all of the PAm-Costco Scholar Fellowship applicants, they showed outstanding potential to contribute to science, and honey bee health research.

Contact: For additional information, contact Sharah Yaddaw at Sharah@ProjectApism.org.