Faculty & Staff

Nicole Bedford

Assistant Professor

Department of Zoology and Physiology

Areas of study: genetic and neural circuit basis of behavioral diversity, systems neuroscience, behavioral genetics, evolutionary biology, lab mice, deer mice

Bledar Bisha

Department Head | Associate Professor

Department of Animal Science

Areas of study: food safety microbiology, antimicrobial resistance, rapid microbial diagnostics, single cell methods

Thomas Boothby

Associate Professor

Department of Molecular Biology

Areas of study: molecular mechanisms of stress tolerance

Grant Bowman

Associate Professor

Department of Molecular Biology

Areas of study: sub-cellular organization in bacteria, macromolecular structures, prokaryotic cell cycle

Danielle Bruns

Associate Professor

Zoology & Physiology

Areas of study: molecular mechanisms of heart failure, aging, and exercise as medicine for the aging heart

Jared Bushman

Associate Professor

School of Pharmacy

Areas of study: roles of astrocytes and other glia in the central nervous system and regeneration of the central and peripheral nervous systems following traumatic injury or disease

Elizabeth D. Case

Assistant Professor

Department of Veterinary Sciences

Areas of study: molecular mechanisms of bacterial pathogenesis, host-pathogen interactions, cell biology, microbiology

Brian Cherrington

Associate Professor

Department of Zoology and Physiology

Areas of study: hormonal and epigenetic control of lactation

Sheba David

Assistant Professor

School of Pharmacy

Areas of study: skin pathology permeation of drug through skin, drug delivery through skin, drug interaction with skin, personalized dosage for treatment regimen through skin

Khaled Elokely

Assistant Professor

Division of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy

Areas of Study: Drug discovery and development, medicinal chemistry, computational chemistry, integrative drug design approaches.

David Fay

Professor

Department of Molecular Biology

Areas of study: development, genetics, cell biology, signal transduction, trafficking, and extracellular matrix

Alex French

Assistant Professor

School of Pharmacy

Areas of study: alcohol use disorder, GPCR signal transduction, neuropharmacology, drug discovery, protein engineering

Jason Gigley

Professor

Department of Molecular Biology

Areas of study: regulation of immune responses, cellular differentiation and host-pathogen interaction, toxoplasma gondii

Mark Gomelsky

Professor

Department of Molecular Biology

Areas of study: optogenetics, synthetic biology, bacterial anticancer therapy, c-di-GMP signaling, listeria monocytogenes biofilms

Guanglong He

Associate Professor

School of Pharmacy

Areas of study: neuroscience, neurophysiology

Sarah Kane

Assistant Professor and Riverbend Chair for Wildlife-Livestock Health

Department of Veterinary Sciences

Areas of Study: Chronic wasting disease, infectious disease environmental surveillance, and human protein misfolding diseases, e.g., Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases

Utkarsh Kapoor

Assistant Professor

Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering

Areas of Study: Computational biophysics and biomaterials design; Biomolecular self-assembly, phase behavior, and polymer nanocomposites; Multiscale modeling and simulation; Chromatin organization and rare-earth separations

Teresa Erika Lehmann

Associate Professor

Department of Chemistry

Areas of study: structural biology, biomedically relevant compounds, NMR, EPR

Daniel Levy

Professor

Department of Molecular Biology

Areas of study: size control of the nucleus and other organelles, xenopus frogs, cell biology

Li Li

Associate Professor

Department of Zoology and Physiology

Areas of Study: Body–brain communications in energy balance and metabolic health, neural circuits and receptors regulating feeding and obesity, and translational targets beyond the blood–brain barrier for metabolic disease.

Yun Li

Associate Professor

Department of Zoology and Physiology

Areas of study: neural coding mechanism, neural circuit, mental disorders, neurodegenerative disorders

Katie Dongmei Li-Oakey

Professor

Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering

Areas of Study: Liquid filtration in energy exploration related activities (coal bed methane, hydraulic fracturing, etc.); Catalytic, functional membrane, thin film and coating material development; Fuel cell catalysts and membrane materials (proton exchange membrane and molten carbonate fuel cells

Sreejayan Nair

Professor

School of Pharmacy

Areas of study: vascular complications of diabetes, cell signaling, antioxidants

Amy Navratil

Associate Professor

Department of Zoology and Physiology

Areas of study: endocrine control of reproduction and role of the cytoskeleton

Adam Nelson

Assistant Professor

Department of Zoology and Physiology

Areas of study: neurobiology, neurogenetics, social behavior, group behavior

John Oakey

Professor

Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering

Areas of study: biomaterials, tissue scaffolds, bioengineering, microfluidic processes

Camellia Moses Okpodu

Professor

Department of Botany

Areas of Study:  Plant oxidative stress responses, epigenomics and machine learning in plant research, climate resilience, and extremophilic algae antioxidant metabolism 

Cristina Palma

Assistant Professor

Department of Molecular Biology

School of Computing

Areas of Study: Bacterial stress responses, Gene regulatory networks, Mathematical modeling Research overview: Our research investigates microbial adaptation mechanisms at the systems level, by focusing on gene regulatory networks (GRNs), i.e., sets of genes and their regulatory factors: transcription factors, DNA supercoiling, and post-translational interactions. The aim is to understand the mechanisms by which GRNs decode stress signals and orchestrate responses that promote survival. For this, we develop stochastic and deterministic models of GRNs. To calibrate and optimize these models, we generate, analyze, and integrate different experimental datasets such as RNA-seq, microscopy, flow cytometry, and plate-reader measurements. Our overarching goal is to uncover how these adaptations are controlled, so that we can design new interventions that disrupt key targets in the adaptation process to e.g., fight antimicrobial resistance.

Eunsook Park

Assistant Professor

Department of Molecular Biology

Areas of study: plant-microbe interaction, organelle dynamics, inter-organellar communication, plant immunity, invasion strategy of microbial pathogen

David W. Pascual

Professor

Department of Veterinary Sciences

Areas of study: mucosal immunology, vaccines, infectious diseases, brucellosis, autoimmunity

Jennifer F. Pinello

Assistant Professor

Department of Molecular Biology

Areas of study: conserved molecular mechanisms of fertilization, gamete membrane adhesion and fusion, vaccine design for blocking the sexual transmission of parasitic disease

Jim Pru

Professor

Department of Animal Science

Areas of study: reproductive physiology, tissue regeneration, non-classical steroid hormone signaling, cancer, women’s reproductive diseases

Brandon Roberts

Assistant Professor

Department of Zoology and Physiology

Areas of study: neurophysiology, chronobiology, metabolic function, neural development

Roberta Maia Sabino

Assistant Professor

Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering

Areas of study: biomaterials, surface science, tissue engineering, biosensors

Emily Schmitt

Associate Professor

Division of Kinesiology and Health

Areas of study: exercise physiology, toxicology, genetics, circadian rhythms

Todd Schoborg

Assistant Professor

Department of Molecular Biology

Areas of study: human disease modeling, genetics, cell biology, development, x-ray and light microscopy

Ram Shukla

Assistant Professor

Department of Zoology and Physiology

Areas of study: translational neuroscience (neurobiology of depression and stress)

Qian-Quan Sun

Professor

Department of Zoology and Physiology

Areas of study: neurobiology, olfaction, learning, microcircuits

Tak Suyama

Assistant Professor

Department of Chemistry

Areas of study: Biocatalysis, Chemical biology, Medicinal chemistry, Natural products

Daniel Wall

Professor

Department of Molecular Biology

Areas of study: microbiology, cell-cell signaling, development & pili dependent motility; biotechnology, antibiotics & resistance

Karen Wawrousek

Associate Professor

Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering

Areas of study: biofuels, bacterial engineering, biomedical diagnostics, resource recovery from waste

Cynthia Weinig

Professor

Department of Botany

Areas of study: evolutionary genetics

Zhaojie Zhang

Research Scientist, Sr ETT

Department of Zoology and Physiology

Areas of study: apoptosis, cohesin, budding yeast