Shields Lab / People
The lab
The professor who leads it, the lab manager and students who run the experiments, and the collaborators on the lab’s papers.
Principal investigator
Vonnie D. C. Shields, Ph.D.
Professor of Biological Sciences
Fisher College of Science and Mathematics
Towson University
Dr. Shields studies how insects use taste, smell and vision to find host plants and avoid harmful compounds. She has served as associate dean of Towson’s Fisher College of Science and Mathematics.
She has mentored undergraduate, master’s and pre-college researchers in the lab, many of whom have presented at national meetings and published as co-authors. She has edited open-access books on insect biology for IntechOpen and has reviewed for journals including PLOS ONE and Arthropod-Plant Interactions.
Education: B.S. and Ph.D., University of Regina, Saskatchewan, with part of her doctoral work at the University of Alberta.
Lab manager
Torben K. Heinbockel
Lab manager and research student since 2022
Undergraduate, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Torben is the lab’s manager. He joined in 2022 as a high-school student and is in charge of setting up and running the experiments on house crickets and spotted-wing drosophila, analyzing the data, and writing the abstracts and manuscripts. He also designed and built this website.
Before starting college he was first author of two peer-reviewed papers in Insects in 2026: the house cricket repellency study and a review of essential oils as alternatives to synthetic insect repellents. He presented the methyl benzoate analog screen as a talk and the cricket study as a poster at NCUR 2026, and presents the analog work at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in November 2026.
- Sigma Xi Student Visionary AwardOne of its eight inaugural recipients, and a finalist in the Student Research Competition, IFoRE 2025
- Grand prizeNOAC National STEM Science Fair, 2024, for the house cricket essential-oil study
- Outstanding ePoster PresentationABRCMS ePoster Spring Symposium, 2023
Recent students
- Rasha O. AlzyoudResearch student
Lead author of the structure-activity study of methyl benzoate analogs (ABRCMS 2024; paper in preparation). Co-author of the 2026 Insects cricket paper; presented cricket repellent work at ABRCMS 2023.
Rana AlzyoudResearch studentFirst author of posters on a high-throughput spatial repellency and knockdown assay for methyl benzoate analogs, at ABRCMS 2025 and at Towson’s 2025 summer conference and fall symposium.
Shazia RaheelResearch studentCo-author of the 2026 Insects cricket paper. First author of a poster on repellents in house crickets at the Fall 2023 USM LSAMP Research Symposium.
J. Marquez VargasResearch studentStructure-activity work on methyl benzoate analogs. First author of a poster at the 2025 USM LSAMP Research Symposium.
Earlier students
- Timothy L. MartinM.S. 2011
Taste receptor cell responses and mixture interactions in spongy moth larvae (Martin and Shields 2012a, 2012b).
- Jillian L. Sanford, Sharon A. Barski and Christina M. SeenCo-authors, 2014
Repellent detection by caterpillar taste cells (PLoS ONE, 2014).
Collaborators
- Aijun Zhang, Ph.D.Research chemist, USDA Agricultural Research Service
Stink bug volatiles; the blueberry push-pull trial.
- Cody C. GaleFirst author, push-pull trial (2024)
Co-author on the methyl benzoate analog posters.
Cesar Rodriguez-Saona, Ph.D.Rutgers UniversityBlueberry push-pull trial.
- Joseph C. Dickens, Ph.D.USDA
Repellent study in caterpillars.
John G. Hildebrand, Ph.D.University of ArizonaDr. Shields’s earlier work on Manduca sexta.
Portraits: Towson University (Dr. Shields); NCUR 2026 (Torben Heinbockel); the students’ own profile photos (Rana Alzyoud, Shazia Raheel, J. Marquez Vargas); the faculty pages of Rutgers University and the University of Arizona (collaborators). Initials stand in until a photo is added.