That was a whirlwind trip.  It was very surreal to be on a tropical island one day and in a castle in Sweden set in a snowy landscape on another day.  First of all I want to post the slides for my presentation at NCSU in Raleigh, my first stop.  Here is a link to my presentations page.  At NCSU I was asked to include some background on the social landscape here in Hawai'i as it pertains to genetic pest management.  This is something I am trying to get my head around so I presented my understanding at this point---how GMO crops and classical biocontrol (which genetic pest management tends to be initially compared to) are connected to issues of sovereignty and self determination in Hawai'i.  I also wanted to make the point---and was able to discuss this point to a great extent---that we tend to only think of regulatory and research funding agencies and labs doing research as the major players and tend to forget about the public until a technology is ready for deployment (then it is too late to make major changes and we tend to try to convince the public to accept what we have already decided).  I met with a lot of people and got a lot of good feedback, from techniques to raise and work with Culex mosquitoes in the lab to embedding non-biologists in the group for feedback on social issues to shape the ongoing research program.

NCSU has an NSF IGERT program to focus on cross disciplinary genetic pest management (link).  I was able to meet with a lot of people in this program during the visit.  At the moment the current cohort of students is focused on invasive mice on islands and ways to suppress the population.  They are doing some pretty exciting stuff.