Biological Sciences Faculty

Professor Susan Braunhut, Ph.D.

Dr. Braunhut's work focuses on mechanisms involved in controlling and maintaining growth and normal functions of blood vessels. Regulating new blood vessel growth is important to cancer therapy as several classes of tumors, including breast and prostate cancers, actively recruit new blood vessels to grow toward the tumor, increasing the growth rate and likelihood these tumors will metastasize to distal sites. Using cell culture, other tools of contemporary cell biology and biochemistry her laboratory group is studying ways to growth regulate and repair blood vessels. Tumor and endothelial cell responses to chemotherapeutics including taxanes, and responses to non-ionizing and ionizing radiation are under investigation.

Michael Graves, Ph.D., Assistant Professor

Dr. Grave's research interests are in the area of the genetics, molecular and cellular biology and physiology of virus-host interactions, specifically the chlorella viruses (genus Chlororvirus).  These viruses are members of the family Phycodnaviridae, an extensive group that consists of large dsDNA (180 to 500 kbp) viruses that infect freshwater and marine algae. Evolutionarily, these viruses are probably quite ancient and are related to other large dsDNA viruses such as the Iridoviruses and Mimivirus. Algal viruses play an important yet not fully understood role in regulating their host populations.

Brian Bettencourt, Ph.D., Assistant Professor

Dr. Bettencourt's research interests are in the areas of ecological and evolutionary functional genomics. His laboratory research involves computational as well as genetic/biochemical approaches. He uses multiple available Drosophila genomes to identify genes under positive Darwinian selection, then conducts field and laboratory analyses of phenotypes to test hypotheses concerning the nature of selection. More broadly, his interests include molecular and phenotypic evolution, bioinformatics and ecological genetics.