New Staff

UC IPM welcomes Priyanka Bandapalli as the new applications programmer. Bandapalli joined UC IPM in March 2022. Bandapalli leads the efforts on various web programming projects such as the urban pesticide database, IPM content management system, and pest weather models.

Bandapalli worked as a senior software engineer developing and implementing customer facing e-commerce, financial, and learning management system websites for more than six years. She also completed a product manager course from Product School. When not working, she enjoys baking and traveling.

We’re happy to introduce Marianna Cherry, writer editor, to UC IPM’s Content Team. Hired with support from the California Department of Agriculture, Cherry will work on completing a decision support tool of pest management practices for commercial crop growers. Cherry’s work on the decision support tool will help with the adoption of IPM practices in California.

Cherry worked as a freelance corporate writer for clients including Lucasfilm and Letterman Digital Arts Center, Montalvo Arts Center, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and is a Pushcart–Prize-winning fiction writer. She holds a B.A. in English from Columbia University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.

Samantha Conselman started with UC IPM in October 2022. Conselman will work on developing and maintaining extension publications and products (Pest Management Guidelines, Year-Round IPM Programs, general information pages, online tutorials, videos, identification cards, and other training materials).

Conselman has a bachelor’s degree in Integrated Plant Sciences: Agricultural Biotechnology from Washington State University. Conselman comes to UC IPM from Marrone Bio Innovations, where she worked as a research scientist and managed forty small plot research trials from protocol development to data analysis. Conselman is also very involved in local soccer organizations, Davis American Youth Soccer Organization (AYSO) and AYSO United Davis.

We are thrilled to announce the hiring of Urban IPM Educator Lauren Fordyce. Fordyce will support the urban IPM outreach and education program by coordinating activities, carrying out train-the-trainer educational programs, working with UC academics and staff, developing materials, and delivering information to urban audiences throughout the state through a variety of mechanisms. She will also participate in program planning and disseminate resources to urban audiences, especially UC Master Gardeners, retail garden centers, and the general public.

Fordyce holds a B.S. in Environmental Science and has several years of experience working in both agriculture and home horticulture. She worked previously for Rutgers Cooperative Extension in New Jersey before moving to California. Fordyce enjoys hiking, gardening, and playing with her dog.

We welcomed our new business manager, Brooke Haley-Herevia, in November 2022. She came to us from the UC Davis Health System where she was the finance and operations manager for the Department of Dermatology. Haley-Herevia brings a wealth of experience in contracts and grants administration and has worked for UC Davis since 2015. Prior to that she had seven years of professional administrative, bookkeeping, and accounting experience. Haley-Herevia has a bachelor's degree in Multicultural and Gender Studies from Chico State and is currently working on completing her M.B.A. from UC Davis Graduate School of Management with a completion date of September 2023. She served as the president of the Northern California Chapter for the Society of Research Administrators and is passionate about the environment, her kids, pets, and the outdoors.

Chris McKerracher accepted the position of Pest Management Guidelines coordinator starting in March 2022. The Pest Management Guidelines is a series of 47 publications covering more than 50 commercially produced crops. They are the University of California's official guidelines for monitoring pests and using pesticides and nonpesticide alternatives for managing insect, mite, nematode, weed, and disease pests. McKerracher will work with UC IPM’s IT/Production Team to publish updates and peer-reviewed revisions. He will write and edit the Guidelines with academic authors and coordinate the peer-review process with ANR’s associate editors in Communication Services.

McKerracher comes with 10-year’s practical experience from Vancouver (British Columbia) Parks and is a Certified Arborist and Red Seal Landscape Horticulturist. He also has an associate degree in Journalism and Public Relations and grew up helping out on his family’s grain farm in Alberta, Canada. Previously, McKerracher worked for ANR Human Resources.

Jennifer Neumann will work on revamping the agricultural production pest management decision support tool. Don’t know what that is? You will soon, thanks to Neumann’s work to capture the management practices in the Pest Management Guidelines and develop an easy-to-use tool for making management decisions. We hired Neumann in November 2022 and are very glad she is sharing her communications and technical writing expertise with us.

Neumann has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Studies from UC Santa Barbara. Most recently, Neumann worked for ICF (a global consulting and technology services provider) in Sacramento, where she edited complex, multidisciplinary environmental reports. Neumann also recently worked as a freelance copy editor and wrote and edited articles and website content for the California Native Plant Society and edited newsletters and books, including a monograph on the purple martin for the Central Valley Bird Club.

Stephanie Parreira-Zweier (she/they) has accepted the position of principal editor beginning in September 2022. Parreira-Zweier will continue to work as part of the Content Development Team on the development and maintenance of extension publications and products (Year-Round IPM Programs, Pest Management Guidelines, online courses, instructional videos, and other training materials).

Parreira-Zweier has a master’s degree in horticulture and entomology from Oregon State University and B.S. degree in environmental studies and planning from Sonoma State University. Her thesis was focused on the effects of pesticide exposure on honey bee health. In their previous work as IPM Writer-Editor, she led the development of three videos on monitoring pests in avocado, assembled a course on Fuller rose beetle management in citrus, and wrote the first Pest Management Strategic Plan for California processing tomato. She also coordinated revisions and updates of Pest Management Guidelines for several crops and facilitated various webinars.

We warmly welcomed Emma Tribble to our team in October 2022! Tribble is a writer editor for the Office of Pesticide Information and Coordination (OPIC) within UC IPM. She also serves as a writer editor for the Western IPM Center. Tribble is a recent graduate from UC Davis with a B.S. in Chemistry and a minor in English. She has one senior authored manuscript in the Journal of College Science Teaching and is a co-author on a manuscript published in the Canadian Journal of Chemistry.

New Academics

Sudan Gyawaly is the new area IPM advisor stationed at the Butte County UC Cooperative Extension office since July 2022. Gyawaly will develop applied IPM programs for orchard crops, including almonds, walnuts, prunes, peaches, and agronomic and vegetable crops in Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Sutter, and Yuba counties. Look for the outcomes of Gyawaly’s IPM research and outreach using various extension tools, including personal consultations, print publications, public presentations, and field days.

Gyawaly comes to UC IPM from UCCE Stanislaus County where he was an Associate Specialist working on major tree nut and other orchard crops pests. Before that, he was a researcher at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Gyawaly has a master’s degree and doctorate degree in entomology from West Virginia University and Virginia Tech, respectively.

Eric Middleton joined UC IPM as an area IPM advisor in June 2022. Middleton is located at the San Diego County UC Cooperative Extension office. Middleton will focus on various pest management issues in nursery and floriculture production, citrus and avocado groves, and the many small farms found in San Diego County.

Middleton comes to UC IPM from Florida, where he studied a new invasive mealybug pest of citrus. He tested sanitation methods to prevent the spread of the pest, and natural enemies and pesticides important for management. He also worked on managing invasive fire ants in citrus groves and evaluated how managing fire ants also impacted the management of mealybugs. Middleton’s doctorate degree is from the University of Minnesota where he studied wildflower plantings established in the unused margins of commercial potato fields, and the impact these had on pollinators, natural enemies, and biological control of Colorado potato beetle.

“I’m excited to join UC Cooperative Extension and looking forward to working in the diverse cropping systems that Southern California has to offer,” says Middleton. “I’m passionate about sustainable agriculture and investigating practical pest management solutions. My goals are to conduct research that is directly applicable to the needs of growers, to promote practices that have less of an impact on the environment, and to share his findings in a way that is accessible to everyone.”

When not working Middleton searches out native flora and fauna, hikes, and practices permaculture techniques while gardening at home.