Faculty Highlights

Melinda A. Yang, assistant professor of biology, Stephanie A. Spera, associate professor of geography, environment, & sustainability, and Beth Zizzamia, spatial analysis lab GIS operations manager, along with students Flora Yi, '27, and Elliot Delroba, '24, published "The AADR Visualizer: an ArcGIS online visualizer for ancient human DNA from the Allen Ancient DNA Resource" in the Bioinformatic Advances. The AADR Visualizer is the associated tool.

Marcella Torres, teaching faculty of mathematics, and Shannon Jones, senior teaching faculty of biology, along with students Aamy Bakry, '24, and Emma Brashear, '27, published "Development of a mathematical model of the innate immune response to inhaled toxicants" in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Isaac Skromne, associate professor of biology, published “A cell fate mapping simulation laboratory to increase undergraduate students’ understanding of early developmental processes in frog, zebrafish, and tunicate embryos” in the Journal of Microbiology and Biological Education.

Priscilla Erickson, assistant professor of biology, along with Weston Gray, post baccalaureate research assistant, published “Field Sampling of Zaprionus indianus in the Eastern United States in 2023-2024” in microPublication Biology.

Priscilla Erickson, assistant professor of biology, along with Weston Gray and Logan M Rakes, post baccalaureate research assistants, and students Christine Cole, ’24, Ansleigh Gunter, ’24, Guanting He, ’26, Samantha Morgan, ’23, Camille R Walsh-Antzak, ’24, and Jillian A Yates, ’24, published “Rapid Wing Size Evolution in African Fig Flies (Zaprionus Indianus) Following Temperate Colonization” in Evolution.

Priscilla Erickson, assistant professor of biology, along with Alexandra Stellwagen, ’26, and Ansleigh Gunter, ’24 published “Limited population structure but signals of recent selection in introduced African Fig Fly (Zaprionus indianus) in North America” in G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics.

Colleen Carpenter-Swanson, assistant professor of Biology, along with students, Audrey Breckenridge, '25, Sanskriti Basnyat, '26, and Eva Fitch, '25, published “Validating the antiseizure effects of vitexin and related flavone glycosides in zebrafish” in Frontiers in Pharmacology.

Omar Quintero-Carmona, associate professor of biology, and John Warrick, associate professor of biology published "Transcriptomic Analysis of CAD Cell Differentiation" in MicroPublication Biology, along with students Lillie Wendt '26, Carlos Cevallos, '17, Anna Leigh White, '20, Brooke Fazio, '21 and GC '22, Jasmine Feng, '20, and Dora Posfai, '13.

Priscilla Erickson, assistant professor of biology, along with Camille Walsh-Antzak, ’24, published "Strength of Enemy Release From Parasitoids Is Context Dependent in the Invasive African Fig Fly, Zaprionus indianus" in Ecology and Evolution.

John Peters, a biology professor at the University of Richmond, has received a National Science Foundation award to support his neuroscience research on the mechanisms of learning and memory.