13 May, 2019
May 13th 2019 – The forest protection society against insects and diseases, in collaboration with the Canadian Forest Service (CFS) of Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), is pleased to announce the two winners of the 2019 Wladimir A. Smirnoff Scholarship : Anne-Sophie Caron, Concordia University, and Barbara Wong, Laval University. Both of them received $ 5,000 to support their research in the field of biology and integrated management of forest pests (insects and diseases).
Ms. Caron is a PhD student in biology at Concordia University. She is supported by Dr. Emma Despland of Concordia University and co-directed by Dr. Benoît Lafleur of UQAT. The proposed PhD project will focus on feedbacks between outbreaks of Malacosoma disstria livery and soil arthropod communities, their role in structuring epidemic cycles of livery and the impact of predators as a source of mortality for delivered.
Ms. Wong is a PhD student in biology at the Institute for Integrative Biology and Systems (IBIS) at Laval University. Sheis supported by Dr. Richard Hamelin (IBIS) and co-led by Dr. Ilga Porth (IBIS), Dr. Kishan Sambaraju, and Dr. Philippe Tanguay, both scientists at Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service. Her research project focuses on the impact of climate change on tree diseases. It proposes to study the interaction of a Dothistroma septosporum pine pathogen with its host under different temperature regimes to better understand the impact of temperature on this interaction.
For the past eighteen years, NRCan CFS and SOPFIM have contributed financially to this fellowship program, which promotes research in the field of biology and integrated management of forest pests (insects and diseases) in honor of Dr. Wladimir A. Smirnoff. Over the course of his career, Dr. Smirnoff has published more than 300 scientific papers and received numerous awards, including the Léo-Pariseau Prize awarded by the French-Canadian Association for the Advancement of Science (ACFAS).