Class of 2024: Atoosa Nikoukar is developing new tools in the battle against invasive pests

From the wheat fields of Iran to the tobacco fields of Southern Virginia, Atoosa Nikoukar’s journey has focused on one mission: managing pests to help agriculture thrive.

This May, she will receive her Ph.D. in entomology from Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and put two decades of education and experience to work as a research scientist at AgroSpheres – a Virginia-based company that develops environmentally-friendly crop protection products.

“I’m very excited about being part of the future of biocontrol of pests,” said. “I’ll be working to develop an alternative biological control approach to manage insect pests in ways that will reduce chemical insecticides application and help protect the environment.”

Nikoukar’s journey started in her home country of Iran, where she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in plant pathology and worked as a pest management specialist for Iran’s Department of Agriculture.

Eager to live in the United States and learn more about integrated pest management – an environmentally-friendly integrated approach to manage pests – she moved to Idaho in 2017. At the University of Idaho, she earned a second master’s degree – this time in entomology.

It was there she met Arash Rashed, an associate professor and expert in integrated pest management and entomology who became her advisor. After earning her master’s degree, Nikoukar stayed on at the University of Idaho to earn her Ph.D. and work in Rashed’s lab.

In 2022, when Rashed came to Virginia Tech as the new director of Virginia Tech’s Southern Piedmont Agricultural Research and Extension Center, Nikoukar followed him.

“Virginia Tech made me feel like part of a family,” she said. “The people and lab facilities are first-rate. I’ve had great mentor and faculty members in entomology department and Southern Piedmont AREC that supported me and helped me to grow my research.”

Over the past few years at Virginia Tech, Nikoukar has worked with industry partners through a summer internship with Altria Group, obtained grants from the USDA-SARE and Organic Farming Research Foundation, and published her research in journals including Insects and the Journal of Economic Entomology.

Her research focuses primarily on wireworms – hard-to-control pests that can damage a wide range of crops, including small grains and organic vegetables, resulting in reduced yields and profits for producers. To fight them, Nikoukar has employed biological control agents including entomopathogenic nematodes (thread worms that kill insects), fungi, plant-derived biochemicals such as brown mustard byproducts, and a molecular approach called RNA interference (RNAi).

“Through my research, I identified a target gene that’s essential for wireworm survival,” she said. “When we injected the dsRNA corresponding to that target gene into the wireworm, it could block the biological function associated with that gene, resulting in killing the insect. In the future, I hope to continue developing this research into an effective, sustainable, and environmentally-friendly approach for crop protection. I’m excited to discover new ways to control pests that support agriculture and the environment.”