Title: Affiliate
Employer: University of Illinois, Prairie Research Institute, Illinois Natural History Survey
Although her B.A. was in French, after arriving in Illinois, Gail would discover that she could combine newly found interests in insects and plant pathology by studying their ability to vector plant diseases. Thus began a 30+ year career during which she obtained a graduate degree at Illinois in Entomology, which helped prepare her for this profession, giving her the confidence and foundations on which to build. She worked at the Illinois Natural History Survey as a Senior Research Entomologist, doing team research on aphids as vectors of plant viruses and all scales of movement of these vectors. She also worked with biodiversity informatics and standards for sharing information about specimens, taxonomic history, literature, and images. Retired since 2010, Gail has remained active in both the biodiversity information standards and entomology communities. She has been a proponent of diversity in the sciences, especially of fostering and retaining women.
She is now a part of the INHS delegation to the Biodiversity Information Standards (tdwg.org) organization and continues to work on preserving the legacy of projects such as the NSF- supported PEET (Partners for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy) project on the fly family, Therevidae. She recognizes how COVID changed the way she participates in her professional life, and welcomes the broadening of remote participation possibilities, which can increase the number of diverse voices and encourage participation from under-represented areas and demographics in her field.
Gail would be an excellent person to talk to about non-teaching research options, transitioning to a new field, or working with diverse audiences. See also https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/7283/480922 and her ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5178-4170. Contact Christina Swanson at alumnimentor@sib.illinois.edu if you would like to connect with Gail.