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Biology

M.S. and Ph.D. in Biology

» Department of Biological Sciences » College of Science

INTRODUCTION
WHAT IT TAKES
WHAT PEOPLE DO
GET INVOLVED
FACULTY

The Department of Biological Sciences offers opportunities for advanced study at the master's and doctoral levels with either a major in biology or a major in microbiology/molecular biology/biochemistry. The Master of Science is a research degree requiring a thesis with a minimum of 30 semester credits. Students seeking a Doctor of Philosophy degree will earn a minimum of 78 hours of semester credit beyond the baccalaureate degree. These hours include credit for dissertation research.

Research in the department is clustered in four main focus areas: Reproductive Biology, Evolution and Ecology, Neurobiology, and Cellular and Molecular Biology. For more complete information on research concentrations, please see the faculty profile pages and the faculty research lab web pages.

Admission to graduate programs in the department is based upon an estimate of probable success in research and courses that lead to a specific graduate degree as indicated by transcripts, letters of recommendation, and performance on the verbal and quantitative sections of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). Research interests expressed in each applicant's letter of intent are compared with those of the focal research areas in the department to determine academic compatibility, so it is important that candidates give as much information as possible relating to research goals.

Prepare for Success

To prepare for the Department of Biological Sciences graduate program, you should have a genuine interest in biological systems, research and teaching. If you are interested in building a career in private industry, particularly in management or administrative positions, you should also possess strong business and communication skills and be familiar with regulatory issues and marketing and management methods.

When applying for the program, please be familiar with the department’s Web site and the research interests of the faculty. Ideally, contact one or more of the faculty members in whose work you’re particularly interested before formally applying. In the application, you’ll be asked to highlight your research interest areas and goals; indicate if there is someone (or several) with whom you’d be interested in working.

To be admitted into the program, you’ll need good undergraduate grades and several letters of recommendation as well as solid performance on the verbal and quantitative sections of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). If you are an international student, you will also need to do well on the TOEFL examination.

Your First Year

As a graduate student, you will complete a teaching practicum, in which you'll teach undergraduate laboratory sections, a statistics course and several elective courses. These electives correspond with your area of research and are identified with your advisory committee. In addition, Master of Science (M.S.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) students take professional development for biologists, ethical issues in biological research, and several seminar or journal club courses. It generally takes two years to complete the M.S. and four to six years to complete the Ph.D. option.

What You Can Do

With a graduate degree, you can move into many innovative careers in the areas of applied research, product development, management or inspection. You may choose to become a high school or college-level teacher, or you may want to build a career in private consulting or management where you focus on medicine, agriculture or environmental protection.

Whether you’re working in the food science lab at Procter & Gamble or you are a genome specialist leading the discovery of genes associated with specific diseases and inherited health risks, you’ll have the opportunity to help people by pairing your scientific education with industry experience.

Opportunities

Many of our biology graduate students have built exciting careers in academia, at the Environmental Protection Agency, pharmaceutical research and sales companies, and law enforcement agencies.

Current Research

Your research interests will largely determine what faculty member is best suited to be your program mentor. View information on the research areas of our entire faculty. Here’s a sampling of faculty research areas:

Tanya Miura, Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Dr. Miura's lab is currently working on two research Projects: The role of neutrophils during viral infection of the lung and detection of viruses by alveolar epithelial cells.
Deborah Stenkamp, Professor, Ph.D. Dr. Stenkamp’s research interests center on the examination of cellular and molecular mechanisms of vertebrate retinal development and regeneration, with a specific focus on photoreceptor differentiation, using zebra fish as the primary experimental model. A major area of current investigation is the involvement of specific factors such as the signaling protein, sonic hedgehog, in regulating the differentiation of rod and cone photoreceptors.
John A. Byers, Professor, Ph.D. Dr. Byers is an animal behaviorist primarily interested in behavioral development, play, sexual selection and female mate choice. Projects now underway in this study, which has run since 1981, are measurement of costs and benefits of female mate choice and evaluation of the fitness consequences of inbreeding in the population.

Hands-On Experience

Our graduate students are very involved in groundbreaking research activities on campus and off-site. Below are a few examples.

Intersection of metabolic and reproductive endocrinology in rainbow trout and steelhead. Lucius Caldwell, Ph.D. Biology, is investigating the intersection of metabolic and reproductive endocrinology in rainbow trout and steelhead. To help improve steelhead kelt reconditioning projects, he is working to determine how a fish senses its energy stores after spawning, and what endocrine factors are involved in communication and integration of this information into the physiological decision to prepare for reproduction in the following year.
Complex Hybridizing Systems. Brice Sarver, Ph.D. Biology, is interested in the genomic effects of speciation in chipmunks (Tamias), a complex hybridizing system. In particular, he is testing hypotheses about divergence in the face of gene flow using genomic-scale datasets. He also has projects evaluating phylogenetic techniques, testing the impact of model selection on analyses, and elucidating the systematic relationships of a plant-pathogenic fungal system.

For more information, visit our graduate student research page.

Facilities

The University of Idaho features several top-rated research facilities, institutes and centers on the Moscow campus:

Onesmo Balemba, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
My research focuses on the pathophysiology of diseases that affect gastrointestinal (GI) functions. My aim is to gain a better understanding of neuromuscular and immune system host responses in diabetes, and infectious diarrhea, and therapeutic strategies for these conditions.
» View Onesmo Balemba's profile

Celeste Brown, Ph.D.
Research Professor
Dr. Celeste Brown has two research areas, how gene regulation changes in response to selection, and the evolution of disordered proteins. The link between these two disparate areas is that often proteins involved in gene regulation are disordered. The gene regulation studies involve laboratory-based research and the disordered protein studies involve bioinformatics approaches.
» View Celeste Brown's Profile

John A. Byers, Ph.D.
Professor
I am an animal behaviorist primarily interested in behavioral development, play, sexual selection and female mate choice. I am a member and Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society. I maintain a longitudinal study of a population of pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) on the National Bison Range in western Montana. Projects now underway in this study, which has run since 1981, are measurement of costs and benefits of female mate choice and evaluation of the fitness consequences of inbreeding in the population.
» View John Byers' Profile

Joseph G. Cloud, Ph.D.
Professor
Projects in Dr. Cloud’s research program are primarily directed toward understanding germ cell development in salmonids and the establishment of a germplasm repository for threatened and endangered fish. Ongoing research projects in the lab include the cryopreservation and transplantation of salmonid gonads and the isolation, culture, and reestablishment of germinal stem cells. Additionally, sperm collected from numerous populations of Snake River chinook salmon and steelhead are cryopreserved and stored annually.
» View Joseph Cloud's Profile

Douglas G. Cole, Ph.D.
Department Associate Chair and Professor
Research interests: Intraflagellar Transport, IFT may transport axonemal precursors, IFT polypeptides, IFT raft architecture, Kinesin-II, the anterograde IFT motor
» View Doug Cole's profile

Larry J. Forney, Ph.D.
Distinguished Professor
Director of IBEST
The research done in Dr. Larry Forney’s laboratory centers on the diversity and distribution of prokaryotes. Both field and laboratory studies are done to explore the temporal and spatial patterns of community diversity, as well as factors that influence the dynamics of inter- and intra-species competition. In addition research is done to understand how spatial structure and the resulting environmental gradients influence the tempo and trajectory of adaptive radiations in bacterial species and the maintenance of diversity. Most of these studies are highly interdisciplinary in nature, and done in collaboration with mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, geologists, environmental engineers, physicians, and clinical scientists.
» View Larry Forney's profile

Elizabeth (Lee) Ann Fortunato, Ph.D.
Professor
Research interests: Understanding the mechanism behind the development of morbidity and mortality in infants congenitally infected with human cytomegalovirus (HCMV)
» View Lee Fortunato's Profile

James A. Foster, Ph.D.
Professor
Dr. Foster’s current research is focused on characterizing evolutionarily permissible ecological structures in microbial ecosystems and on developing bioinformatics for very large sequence datasets. He continues to examine simulations of evolutionary processes to design complex artifacts and optimize functions. He works in close collaboration with biologists, statisticians, mathematicians, and computer scientists.
» View James Foster's profile

Peter G. Fuerst, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
My lab is attempting to identify and understand the molecular cues that promote development of the nervous system by studying mice that have mutations in recognition factors and that express fluorescent markers that label specific neural cell types.
» View Peter Fuerst's Profile

Luke J. Harmon, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Our research investigates ecological and evolutionary aspects of adaptive radiations. Current projects span a wide range of taxa and time scales, including adaptive radiation in E. coli biofilms, evolution of island lizards in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean, and macroevolutionary dynamics of vertebrates. You will find more information about all of these projects on the research and publications pages.
» View Luke Harmon's Profile

Patricia L. Hartzell, Ph.D.
Professor
Research interests: The mechanisms by which the complex prokaryote, Myxococcus xanthus, coordinates two independent motility systems during growth and development.
» View Patricia Hartzell's Profile

Paul Hohenlohe, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Our research focuses on the genomic architecture of evolving populations, developing sophisticated theory and analytical tools to harness the power of modern DNA sequencing technology. We address basic questions of evolutionary biology as well as applications to conservation and cancer biology.
» View Paul Hohenlohe's profile

Jill L. Johnson, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Research interests: Role of molecular chaperones in the cell, especially the study of a chaperone called Hsp90 (90 kDa heat shock protein).
» View Jill Johnson's profile

Craig P. McGowan
Assistant Professor
My research interests are centered on understanding the relationships between the musculoskeletal morphology of terrestrial vertebrate animals (including humans) and the biomechanics and neural control of locomotor performance.

» cpmcgowan@uidaho.edu

Craig Miller, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor
» crmiller@uidaho.edu

Tanya Miura, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Research interests: Regulation of the Immune Response to Coronavirus Infection in the Lung.
» View Tanya Miura's profile

James J. Nagler, Ph.D.
Interim Chair and Professor of Biological Sciences
Associate Director of WSU/UI Center for Reproductive Biology
The Nagler laboratory studies the effect of environmental factors, such as contaminants, photoperiod and diet on the reproductive biology of salmonid fishes.
» View Dr. Nagler's profile

Scott L. Nuismer, Ph.D.
Professor
My research focuses on the ecology and evolution of species interactions. The overall aim is to better understand how coevolution shapes patterns of biodiversity and the geographic distributions of interacting species. Work in my lab addresses these issues with a combination of mathematical modeling and field studies.
» View Scott Nuismer's Profile

Barrie Robison, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
My general research interests lie at the interface between genomics, evolutionary biology, and fisheries biology. Specific areas of research emphasis in my lab include the genetic architecture of complex traits, the evolution of locally adaptive phenotypes, and genomic analysis of behavioral variation in fish. I employ two study systems to investigate these issues, the rainbow trout and the zebrafish.
View Barrie's profile
» brobison@uidaho.edu

Deborah Stenkamp, Ph.D.
Professor
Stenkamp’s research interests center on the examination of cellular and molecular mechanisms of vertebrate retinal development and regeneration, with a specific focus on photoreceptor differentiation, using zebrafish as the primary experimental model.
» View Deborah Stenkamp's profile

John "Jack" M. Sullivan, Ph.D.
Professor
Our understanding of the processes of nucleotide substitution (DNA sequence evolution) has been expanding greatly over the last 10 years. Furthermore, it has become apparent that ignoring such processes as heterogeneity of base composition, substitution pattern, and rate variation among nucleotide sites can compromise attempts to estimate phylogeny from DNA sequence data. Therefore, model-based analyses of DNA sequence data have become increasingly wide spread because such approaches afford the investigator the opportunity to account for such processes explicitly.
» View Jack Sullivan's Profile

Eva Top, Ph.D.
Professor
Director of BCB
My research is currently focused on the evolution and ecology of plasmids that transfer to and replicate in a broad range of bacteria. Plasmids are mobile genetic elements found in most bacteria. Because they readily transfer between different types of bacteria under natural conditions, they play an important role in rapid bacterial adaptation to changing environments. A good example is the current epidemic of multiple antibiotic resistance in human pathogens, which is largely due to the spread of multi-drug resistance plasmids. Although plasmid-mediated gene transfer is now recognized as a key mechanism in the alarming rise of antibiotic resistance, little is known about their host range, their ability to invade bacterial populations in the absence of selection, and their genetic diversity. We are addressing these questions using various Proteobacteria and plasmids as model systems.
» View Eva Top's Profile

Holly A. Wichman, Ph.D.
University Distinguished Professor
The Wichman Lab studies viruses and their subcellular relatives, transposable elements. These two lines of research are united by a molecular approach and a strong evolutionary context. L1 elements have been active in mammals for over 150 million years and make up about 20% of the genome. Most of the copies in the genome are ancient molecular fossils, so it is a challenge to sift through all of the old copies to find those that have been recently active.
View Holly's profile
» hwichman@uidaho.edu