[Entm-beu] [EGSA] Fwd: Insect Fair 2026 – Thank You, Highlights & Booth Competition Results

Wed Apr 29 11:12:12 PDT 2026

.....and a HUGE shoutout to this year's *Insect Fair Chair Veronica Tyts*
for an enormous task superbly well done....! :-)

On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 10:35 AM Krista Zavala via EGSA <egsa at lists.ucr.edu>
wrote:

> Sent on behalf of Veronica Tyts <veronica.tyts at ucr.edu>
>
> Hello everyone!
>
> Last Saturday, we successfully hosted one of our biggest departmental
> events – *Insect Fair*!
>
> *Booth competition results:*
> Booth A (Biodiversity and Conservation) and Booth B (Urban Entomology)
> tied, so this year we have two winners instead of 1st and 2nd place. I’ll
> be reaching out to the booth representatives soon. Congratulations!!! 🎉
>
> *Some highlights from this year:*
>
>    - Record number of visitors (over 20,000!)
>    - Record number of participating labs (21 total!!!!!!)
>    - Ticketed and reorganized Touch-a-Bug (new table layout + structured
>    shifts) ran very smoothly
>    - We introduced a Q&A panel that people loved! There was not a single
>    quiet moment without questions!
>    - Collaboration with a digital artist for lab-themed sticker designs
>    - More space between booths (finally!)
>    - Graduate students chose the featured insect for the pin (honeypot
>    ant - even if the final design had some… creative morphology :) )
>    - Received headshots the next day after getting them taken (I am still
>    shocked!)
>    - And amazing weather for a change! Finally, we were not soaking wet
>    or grilled!
>
> Now, *I want to thank everyone in the department! *This event would not
> have been possible without you!
>
> First, our lab booths: if you look at the attached photo, most visitors
> are gathered around the UCR research booths (thanks to Erin Wilson Rankin
> for pointing that out and Dong-Hwan Choe for the photos!). That really
> shows how central our research was to the event! I am extremely grateful to
> all of you who participated in the event!
>
> A huge thank you to the Insect Zoo staff and especially Karthikeyan
> Chandrasegaran for ensuring we had all the insects ready for Touch-a-Bug,
> helping with signage (special thanks to Jacqueline Holquinn!!!), layout,
> and keeping things running smoothly at Touch-a-Bug. Also, thank you to
> everyone who donated insects. They made a big difference!
>
> To our Touch-a-Bug volunteers: you made an already popular activity an
> absolute hit! Thank you so much! This was honestly the most stressful part
> to organize, and I was incredibly relieved to see both sign-ups and the
> event itself run so smoothly. Special thanks as well to those who helped
> transport insects!
>
> Thank you to our booth competition judges whose names I won't reveal :)
> Feel free to share any feedback on the rubric with me!
>
> Thank you to our Q&A panelists! Your expertise and willingness to engage
> with the public made a huge impact.
>
> Thank you to everyone involved in the stage activities! Story Time and the
> cockroach races were fantastic! And of course, a special shoutout to Joshua
> Reger for being an amazing stage host!
>
> A big thank you to our office staff for helping manage all the many (and
> often unexpected!) emails and logistics related to the Insect Fair.
>
> I’m very grateful to the EGSA Insect Fair committee. This would have been
> much harder without you! Special thanks to:
>
>    - Talli Weiss for organizing Touch-a-Bug tickets
>    - Molly Barber for helping with Q&A and helping me make hard decisions
>    :)
>    - Mel Thayer, Helen Vo, and Winnifred Opio Aool for making sure we had
>    food and drinks, and Blanca Peto for helping with the estimations
>    - Molly Barber and Mona Tran for helping to organize sticker sales as
>    the EGSA merch committee
>
> And of course, thank you to our former Insect Fair chair, Sarah Schroeder,
> for guidance, and to our department chair, Christiane Weirauch, for helping
> with logistics, funding, and securing insects.
>
> That’s quite a long list (I hope I didn't forget anyone...), but it really
> shows *how much teamwork goes into making this event happen!*
>
> *I’d love to hear your feedback so we can make next year even better!*
> Please let me know what worked well and what we should improve.
>
> One more time, THANK YOU, EVERYONE!
>
> All the best,
> Insect Fair Chair,
> Veronica
>
> *Veronica Tyts*
> Ph.D. candidate (she/her) | Heteropteran Systematics Lab
> <https://heteroptera.ucr.edu/>
> Department of Entomology
> University of California, Riverside
>
> _______________________________________________
> EGSA mailing list
> EGSA at lists.ucr.edu
> https://lists.ucr.edu/mailman/listinfo/egsa
>

-- 
Christiane Weirauch
Professor & Chair
Department of Entomology
University of California, Riverside

Ph: 951-827-5707 (Office)
Email: christiane.weirauch at ucr.edu
https://profiles.ucr.edu/christiane.weirauch
<christiane.weirauch at ucr.edu>
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