Elizabeth (Liz) Walsh, Ph.D., is a research scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), in the Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics, and Physiology Research unit in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Here, Walsh poses beside a small honey bee swarm on a tree branch on her first day at the USDA-ARS in May 2022. (Photo by Kate Ihle)
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Written by: Pierre Lau, Ph.D.
Editor’s Note: This is the next article in the “Standout ECPs” series contributed by the Entomological Society of America’s Early Career Professionals (ECP) Committee, highlighting outstanding ECPs that are doing great work in the profession. (An ECP is defined as anyone within the first five years of obtaining their terminal degree in their field.) Read past articles in the Standout ECPs series.
Elizabeth (Liz) Walsh, Ph.D., is a research scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, in the Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics, and Physiology Research unit in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in 2022 with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada under the guidance of Steve Pernal, Ph.D., at the Beaverlodge Research Farm in Alberta. During that fellowship she explored the links between honey bee health cshallenges and honey bee biomarkers as a part of the national BeeCSI project, and she also did work with American foulbrood and chalkbrood, exploring stock variation, asymptomatic versus symptomatic infections, and more.
In contrast, for her Ph.D. at Texas A&M University, completed in 2019 under guidance of Juliana Rangel, Ph.D., Walsh explored the impact of miticide exposure in immature honey bee queens. For her bachelor’s degree, received in 2014, Walsh double majored in English and biology at Ripon College in her home state of Wisconsin.
Walsh says she is pleased to be well into her “teenage” years as a beekeeper, since she began keeping bees as a young high school student, and she is proud to serve the beekeeping industry through research initiatives. At USDA-ARS, she is currently working on various projects that include examining aggression due to environmental stressors, different responses within various honey bee stocks, drone reproductive health and biology, queen reproductive health after stressor exposure, and honey bee variation in responses to pathogens.
To read on, visit: https://entomologytoday.org/2024/04/23/high-school-beekeeper-usda-honey-bee-researcher-liz-walsh-standout-early-career-professional/
