Biology Bios

This week, Dr. Dustin Reichard joins us from Ohio Wesleyan University to talk about his research in animal behavior, the career path that landed him at a liberal arts school with a strong undergraduate research program, as well as songbirds and baking (those last two aren't mixed together, don't worry).

This week, Dr. Colleen Jonsson joins us from just down the road at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center. In addition to running the regional biocontainment lab, Dr. Jonsson does in-depth molecular research on viruses, including some pretty scary ones and others from remote regions of a South American rainforest. We'll hit on Eastern Equine Encephalitis, yoga, and everything in between.

Join us for a conversation with Dr. Jackie Lebenzon from the University of Calgary about her work on potato beetle physiology, baking, and of course, penguins!

Among other topics, Clay Cressler, from the University of Nebraska, talks about blending mathematical theory and experiments, getting into a biology PhD program without ever having taken any biology classes, and backpacking.

Dr. Kate LeCroy from just down the street at Rhodes College shares insights into native bee biology and conservation, finding her people in biology, and the critical importance of Dolly Parton playlists and impersonators in science.

It's our final episode for spring 2024 and it's on quite a delay--sorry! But worth the wait--I sat down in person with Dr. Mariel Pfeifer to talk about her work in Biology Education Research and how she got where she is today. For more information on Dr. Pfeifer, check out her webpage, here:

https://www.pfeiferlab.com/

This week Dr. Vanessa Ezenwa joins us from Yale University to talk about her research on wild African buffalo, their wormy and bacterial co-infections, and how taking an animal behavior class in college changed the course of her career.

This week, I sit down with Dr. Amber Smith to talk about she blends mathematical models with experimental manipulations to understand how infection with more than one pathogen at the same time (or in rapid succession) can alter immune defenses and disease outcomes. Embrace the nonlinearity!

Although Dr. Cooper's talk at Memphis has already passed, we were able to sit down and chat about her path in Biology, which ended up in some really interesting realms of evolution and developmental biology (and some pretty darn charismatic study organisms--jerboas).

Dr. Christina Kwapich joins Biology Bios to talk about how her love of critters, most notably ants, turned into an adventure that's taken her all across the nation and around the world.