Biological Sciences

Gustavo Arrizabalaga, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Research interest: Use knowledge gained in the successful identification of an IIE gene and its cellular function to identify genes required for natural egress by isolating and characterizing mutants in this crucial process.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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» jbyers@uidaho.edu

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.
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» jcloud@uidaho.edu

Douglas G. Cole, Ph.D.
Professor and Associate Chair
Research interests: Intraflagellar Transport, IFT may transport axonemal precursors, IFT polypeptides, IFT raft architecture, Kinesin-II, the anterograde IFT motor
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» dcole@uidaho.edu

Larry J. Forney, Ph.D.
Professor & Acting Chair
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.
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Elizabeth (Lee) Ann Fortunato, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Research interests: Understanding the mechanism behind the development of morbidity and mortality in infants congenitally infected with human cytomegalovirus (HCMV)
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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.
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Peter G. Fuerst
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.
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» fuerst@uidaho.edu

Luke J. Harmon, Ph.D.
Assistant 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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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» cpmcgowan@uidaho.edu

Bruce L. Miller, Ph.D.
Professor
Research interests: Reproductive biology of the filamentous fungus Aspergillus nidulans.
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» bmiller@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.
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James J. Nagler, Ph.D.
Professor
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Scott L. Nuismer, Ph.D.
Associate 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.
» snuismer@uidaho.edu

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.
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» brobison@uidaho.edu

Erica Bree Rosenblum, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
My research emphasizes understanding the processes that generate and impact biological diversity, with a focus on adaptive evolution across different levels of biological organization. I employ functional and comparative genomics tools to develop a mechanistic understanding of adaptive traits at the molecular level. However, I also work with real organisms in their real habitats, and my research is motivated by evolutionarily and ecologically important questions.
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» rosenblum@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.
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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.
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Eva Top, Ph.D.
Professor
Eva Top is a microbial ecologist whose interests can be roughly divided into two major areas. The main research interest is the role of horizontal gene transfer in the adaptation of bacterial populations and communities to changing environmental conditions, and in bacterial evolution in general. The second area of interest is the diversity, structure and dynamics of bacterial communities in natural or bioreactor environments, such as soil, sediments, wastewater treatment reactors, and gastrointestinal ecosystems, and how these communities respond to various disturbances.
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» evatop@uidaho.edu

Holly A. Wichman, Ph.D.
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.
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» hwichman@uidaho.edu

Xia Zhou, M.D.
Research Assistant Professor
My project focuses on characterizing the composition and structure of vaginal microbial ecosystems using cultivation-independent methods.Using T-RFLP coupled to phylogenetic analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences, we hope to gain a better understanding how the structures of vaginal communities influence susceptibility to various diseases.
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