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Jan. 8, 2007 Deadline for William C. Reeves New Investigator Award

William Reeves (Jane Scherr photo)

DAVIS, CALIF. —Applications for the statewide William C. Reeves New Investigator Award, memorializing a renowned University of California entomologist, will be accepted through Monday, Jan. 8, 2007 at the UC Mosquito Research Program (UCMRP).

The award, sponsored by the Mosquito and Vector Control Association of California (MVCAC) and UCMRP, is for the best scientific paper presented at the MVCAC conference, set Feb. 4-7 in Fresno, said awards committee chair and medical entomologist Gregory Lanzaro, UCMRP director and professor of entomology at UC Davis.

The winner receives $1000 in cash and a plaque. The second-place winner receives $500, and the third place,  $250.

Eligible to apply for the annual award are undergraduate and graduate students at a California college or university or post-graduate scientists who received their degrees no more than three years ago.  Post-graduate scientists must be working within the general field of biology,  vector control or vector-borne diseases.

Applicants must either be the sole author or senior author of a scientific paper.  “They will be judged on the quality of the student upon which the scientific paper is based, the quality of the written report and the quality of the presentation at the conference,” Lanzaro said.

The conference takes place in the Radisson Hotel and Conference Center, 2233 Ventura St., Fresno.

The award memorializes William C. Reeves (1916-2004) of UC Berkeley, widely regarded at one of the world’s foremost authorities on the spread and control of mosquito-borne diseases.  He was a frequent visitor to the UC Davis campus.

Reeves, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health from 1967 to 1971, designed the first live mosquito trap using carbon dioxide and light, and established the sentinel chicken monitoring system for mosquito-borne diseases. He also invented a method of tracking mosquitoes by marking them with fluorescent dust. “This suddenly enabled researchers to study the mosquitoes' life cycles, including how far they traveled, how long they lived and other critical information used to design and evaluate mosquito control programs,” wrote Sarah Yang of UC Berkeley, Media Relations in a Sept. 20, 2004 obituary.

The death of a crow in New York City, signally the start of the West Nile virus in the United States, pulled Reeves out of retirement. “West Nile Virus had emerged as a new public health threat, and there were few people more qualified than Reeves to advise state and federal health officials on the epidemic,” Yang wrote. “Reeves became an invaluable resource for public health officials, many of whom were his former students.”

Lisa Reimer, a doctorate student in the Lanzaro Vector Genetics Lab at UC Davis, won the 2006 Reeves Award for her research on insecticide resistance in Anopheles gambiae, the principal vector of malaria. The parasitic disease kills some 2.5 to 3 million people a year worldwide, primarily in Africa.

Further information on the Reeves award is available on the UCMRP Web site or by contacting administrative assistant Nancy Dullum at (530) 752-6983 or at nadullum@ucdavis.edu. The MVCAC Web site is at www.mvcac.org.

UCMRP, established in 1972, is a statewide program of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The statewide programs focus on research and extension in solving priority problems in the management of California agriculture, natural resources, and human development.