The past academic year brought many new faculty and staff to our department:
Dr. George Brusch IV joined the Department of Integrative Biology as an Assistant Professor in August 2020. George received his Ph.D. in 2019 from Arizona State University and moved with his family for a postdoctoral position in France with the French National Center for Scientific Research. George uses integrative methods to answer questions regarding animals that live in environments where resources are limited. Currently, he is working with an international team and a small army of undergraduate students to investigate how thermal and hydric constraints interact with behavioral and physiological responses to influence organismal responses to climate change. They are using a lizard model to provide the first assessment of how temperature and hydration interact to impact maternal physiology, reproductive output, offspring morphology and survival, and acclimation ability.
Dr. Jodie Wiggins joined the Department of Integrative Biology as a Teaching Assistant Professor in August 2020. Jodie taught Jr. High and Elementary science before completing her M.S. in Biology at Midwestern State University followed by her Ph.D. in Integrative Biology here at OSU. Jodie subsequently completed postdoctoral training through the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her research focuses on the evolution of sex determining mechanisms in lizards and developing meaningful research experiences for undergraduate students. She currently teaches General Genetics, Evolution, Physiology, and Human Heredity.
Dr. Guin Wogan joined the Department of Integrative Biology as an Assistant Professor in January 2021. Guin earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in Integrative Biology and was a postdoc in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at Berkeley. She focuses on ecological genomics to understand the neutral and adaptive processes that generate species, maintain phenotypic and genomic diversity, and drive response to natural and anthropogenic environmental change. Guin’s current research is focused on understanding the genomic basis of ecologically relevant phenotypes within the environmental contexts that have shaped their trajectories.