Priyanka Mittapelly, Ph.D., is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA-APHIS) and the University of Richmond. Her expertise is in molecular biology and plant-insect interactions. Mittapelly was born and raised in India, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in biotechnology and master’s degree in microbiology from Kakatiya University. She earned her Ph.D. in entomology at The Ohio State University.