Researcher Spotlight

Our faculty have made discoveries and conducted innovative research that has garnered them international recognition as leaders in their fields. They also are superb teachers dedicated to transferring their knowledge to the next generation of biochemists.

  • Comparative Genomics
    6/19/14

    Norma Nowak, PhD, studies global comparative genomics and differential gene expression analyses. She contributed to the creation of the BAC libraries used to sequence the human genome.

  • Programmed for Obesity
    6/19/14

    Mulchand Patel, PhD, is a specialist in nutritional biochemistry. He found that fetuses of obese mother rats were programmed in utero to develop obesity in adulthood, and was the first to show that this metabolic programming occurs in the fetal hypothalamus.

  • Brain Function and Disease
    6/19/14

    Gabriela Popescu, PhD, is studying NMDA receptors in the brain, which are involved in synaptic development, plasticity, memory and learning, as well as in pathologies such as stroke, neurodegeneration, chronic pain, addiction, schizophrenia and epilepsy.

  • Repairing Heart Tissue
    6/19/14

    Te-Chung Lee, PhD, demonstrated for the first time, in an animal model, that injecting adult bone marrow stem cells into skeletal muscle can repair cardiac tissue, reversing heart failure. He and his team showed that this non-invasive procedure increased heart cells two-fold.

  • Copper and Iron Transport
    6/19/14

    Daniel Kosman, PhD, studies how organisms acquire and metabolize iron and copper, intrinsically toxic metals essential to cellular respiration and oxygen transport. One of his goals is to develop antifungal drugs to treat infections in humans.

  • Understanding Iron Metabolism
    6/19/14

    Michael Garrick, PhD, identified the first protein essential for normal intestinal iron absorption and the first mammalian iron transporter to be characterized at the molecular level. His work provides a major step forward in the understanding of iron metabolism.