Hannah E. Quellhorst, PhD

Hannah E. Quellhorst completed a B.S. and M.S. in Entomology at Purdue University. She completed her Ph.D. in Stored Products Entomology at Kansas State University. During her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree at Purdue University, she researched a hermetic packaging technology called Purdue Improved Crop Storage (PICS) bags, studying the oxygen requirements of several stored product insects. These data helped to better understand how insects may survive and damage grain under hermetic conditions. Her work allowed us to predict the population densities that may develop under various abiotic conditions and the corresponding damage. Finally, she successfully obtained funding for and traveled to Haiti to understand the postharvest challenges and gender roles of smallholder farmers.

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As a PhD student at Kansas State University in collaboration with the USDA-ARS Center for Grain and Animal Health Research, she focused on integrated pest management (IPM) options for maize production by stakeholders across the globe to help control the invasive larger grain borer and the cosmopolitan maize weevil. She investigated improved chemical, physical, and cultural control methods for managing these pests. This involved evaluating a novel, reduced-risk insecticide, determining optimal packaging types for goods with maize, improving food safety in the post-harvest environment, and investigating grain colonization and competition by maize weevil and larger grain borer. She finished the last two years of her PhD with a NIFA Pre-Doctoral Fellowship ($118,000) which allowed her to study for two months at the University of Thessaly in Volos Greece and work with international collaborators at the University of Thessaly to help document and identify microbes of concern for human and animal health vectored by the invasive larger grain borer.

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Currently, Dr. Quellhorst is a postdoctoral fellow at Kansas State University, working on the chemical ecology of a sunflower weevil, a native but resurging pest of sunflower causing serious problems for stakeholders, especially in the Dakotas. She is focused on finding Integrated pest management option to help growers such as a pheromone lure. She also continues her involvement in stored products pest research. 

 

Her interests include global food security, international development, women empowerment, insect biochemistry and physiology, and insect behavior. In the future, she hopes to focus on humanitarian science through a career in Entomology. Her life-long career goal includes helping to transform agriculture by improving pest management to feed our world’s increasing population.