Rural Health
Research
The Hawai‘i Branch of the American Society for Microbiology held their annual Spring Symposium on Saturday, April 11, 2026 at the John A Burns School of Medicine. The keynote speaker for the event was Dr. Jason K. Blackburn, Professor and Chair of the Department of Geography and Director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida. Dr. Blackburnʻs research centers on global zoonotic disease ecology, with an emphasis on international collaboration, capacity building, and the development of sustainable surveillance and training programs across low-resource and high-risk regions. The title of Dr. Blackburnʻs talk was “Bridging the Col: Environmental Reservoirs and Evolutionary Pathways – GeoAI and Genomics to Redefine Medical Geography”.
The symposium featured oral and poster presentations by students representing the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, and Hawai‘i Pacific University. Undergraduate, Masters, and PhD students competed for awards for best oral presentation, best poster presentation, the Peggy Cotter Early Career Travel Award, and the Colonel Person award for the highest scoring presentation. This year’s winners were:
Colonel Person Award
Jessica Leaning
Peggy Cotter Travel Awards
Liam Fressie
Marie Therese Cook
Yu-Ching Dai
PhD Oral Presentation
1st Place – Troy Odo
2nd Place – Jonatan Josue Fierro Nieves
3rd Place – William Harrigan
PhD Poster Presentation
1st Place – Prashant Dahal
2nd Place – Thomas Ken Awamura
3rd Place – Thi Hai Au La
MS Oral Presentation
1st Place – Yuewen Ding
2nd Place – Natalie OʻConnor
MS Poster Presentation
1st Place – Jessica Leaning
2nd Place – Anuj Pawar
3rd Place – Marika-Leeah Bartholomew
Undergraduate Oral Presentation
1st Place – Johnathan Cornell
2nd Place – Edwin Arii
Undergraduate Poster Presentation
1st Place – Colby H. Macapagal
2nd Place – Riley Ann Katsue Kaai