Dr. Allison Gardner receives Entomological Society of America’s Early Career Innovation Award

August 25, 2025 News and Announcements

Read the full article here: https://entsoc.org/news/press-releases/2025-awards

Early Career Innovation Award

This award honors young professionals working within the field of entomology who have demonstrated innovation through contributions within any area of specialization (research, teaching, extension, product development, public service, etc.).

Allison Gardner
University of Maine

Allison Gardner, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the School of Biology and Ecology at the University of Maine. She completed her Ph.D. in entomology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, M.S. in behavioral science at the London School of Economics, and B.A. at Williams College.

The major focus of Gardner’s research is the impacts of human behavior and decision-making on vector-borne pathogen transmission in natural resource economies. She has led multiple interdisciplinary projects investigating tick-borne disease ecology and management on private woodland and feedbacks between human mobility and mosquito-borne virus spread in the nature-based tourism industry. Gardner also leads research on tick control in residential settings, integrating entomology, psychology, and economics, as a founding member of the New England Regional Center of Excellence for Vector-Borne Disease. She has pursued her interest in the adoption of scientific research findings at the policy level as an ESA Science Policy Fellow.

Teaching is Gardner’s favorite part of her position, and she regularly teaches undergraduate courses in introductory entomology and emerging infectious disease and a graduate-level applied statistics course.  She has mentored two postdoctoral researchers, four Ph.D. students, nine M.S. students, and dozens of undergraduates in independent research, and serves as program coordinator for an interdisciplinary graduate program in ecology and environmental sciences.

Gardner would like to thank her graduate school mentors, Brian Allan, Ph.D., Juma Muturi, Ph.D., and May Berenbaum, Ph.D., as well as her University of Maine colleagues, especially Andrei Alyokhin, Ph.D., and Jessica Leahy, Ph.D., for their support and encouragement.