Alumni News
Mary Dawson, BS ‘52
Mary Dawson is emeritus curator of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. She has recently completed two geographically-separated papers. One deals with a large assemblage of 50 million year old rodents from south central Wyoming. The other is about the phylogeny and paleobiogeography of the large mammalian herbivore Coryphodon, which she collected as part of her field investigation of the fossil record in the high Arctic during the early Cenozoic.
Kenneth J. Boss, MS ‘59
Kenneth Boss is a malacologist, emeritus professor of biology and curator of the molluscan collection at Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology. Boss has written articles on the careers of distinguished malacologists Dall, Thiele and Von Martens.
David Moehring, BS '60
David Moehring joined the staff of UC-Davis, Department of Orthopedic Surgery in 1988 until retirement in 2009. He is currently active as a volunteer clinical faculty member and has served in Nepal, Pakistan, and more recently, the Himalayan country of Bhutan.
James Trosko, MS '62, Ph.D '63
James Trosko is a current faculty member in the MSU College of Human Medicine. He was recently awarded a Seoul National University "World Class University Invited Professorship" for the second year. Previously, he was awarded a Korean Ministry of Education, Science & Technology "Brain Pool" award.
Wendel Johnson, BS ‘63, MS ‘65
Wendel Johnson is a professor and lead biologist at the University of Wisconsin - Marinette. He was honored in the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Moose/Wolf Studies on Isle Royale sponsored by the National Park Service and Michigan Technological University.
Max Terman, M.A.T. '69, Ph.D '73
Max Terman recently published an ebook, "Hiram's Honor: Reliving Private Terman's Civil War".
Pamela (Walsworth) McAllister, M.A.T. '70, Ph.D '73
Pamela McAllister is an active cancer research advocate and received the 2011 Andrew Giusti Memorial Award for activism from the Fight Colorectal Cancer organization. She is retired from the University of Wisconsin and works avidly as a research advocate to advance the research and treatment of colorectal cancer.
Ajovi Scott-Emuakpor, MAT ‘68, PhD ‘70 & ‘77
Ajovi Scott-Emuakpor is a professor of pediatrics and human development and faculty member in the African Studies Center at MSU. He also serves as division chief of Pediatric and Adolescent Hematology/Oncology at the Center for Bleeding and Clotting Disorders.
Hal Caswell, BS ‘71, PhD ‘74
Hal Caswell is a senior scientist in the Biology Department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and is involved in research on population viability of polar bears, emperor penguins, right whales, lemurs, and endangered plants. He received the 2008 Per Brinck Oikos Award from the Swedish Oikos Society, the 2007 Ecological Research Award from the Ecological Society of Japan, and a 2007 Unit Citation Award from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Robert Enderle, BS '72
Robert Enderle has recently released a new novel, "Antwerp."
Paul Hamel, BS '72, M.A.T. '72
Paul Hamel is a USDA Forest Service research scientist. He has been elected as a Fellow of the American Ornithologists' Union. Hamel works as a research wildlife biologist at the SRS Center for the Bottomland Hardwoods Research in Stoneville, MS, where he studies the impact of forest management on neotropical migratory and other nongame birds, large and small mammals, and land-based mollusks.
Brenda Alston-Mills, MA ’72, PhD ‘84
Brenda Alston-Mills is associate dean and director of the Office of Organization and Professional Development for Diversity and Pluralism, at Michigan State University, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. In 2008 she was honored with a community service award from the Raleigh/Wake Chapter (North Carolina) National PanHellenic Council.
Donald Straney, BS ‘73, MAT ‘73
Donald Straney is dean of the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He spent 23 years as a faculty member at MSU, including serving as department chair from 1987-95.
David Wilson, Ph.D '75
David Wilson has recently published "The Neighborhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve my City, One Block at a Time".
Christopher Harner, MD, BS '76
Christopher Harner is medical director of UPMC Center for Sports Medicine in Pittsburgh, PA. He was recently appointed to the presidential line of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine. He also serves as head team physician at Duquesne University and team physician for the University of Pittsburgh's Women's Basketball program.
Archie J. Vomachka, PhD '76
After receiving a Ph.D in Zoology, Archie Vomachka received a postdoctoral fellowship in reproductive physiology at the University of Kansas Medical Center, and then began teaching in 1979. Faculty assignments included positions at Princeton University and Marquette University, prior to coming to Arcadia University. He became Associate Professor of Biology at Arcadia University in 1988. He has also served as the department chairperson, from 1989-2001 and 2005-2006. He was promoted to the rank of Professor in 2000. After 23 years in the Biology Department, Dr. Vomachka was appointed Founding Dean of the College of Health Sciences at Acradia University, in 2011.
Mark A. Batzer, BS ‘83, MS ‘85
Mark Batzer is an LSU System Boyd Professor and the Dr. Mary Lou Applewhite Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Louisiana State University. His recent research on the Human 1000 Genomes Project and the Orangutan Genome Sequence and Analysis both appeared as cover articles in the journal Nature. He was elected a Fellow of AAAS in 2007 and received an ING Professor of Excellence Award at LSU in 2010.
Paul A. X. Bologna, BS '88
Paul Bologna is an associate professor of biology and molecular biology and the director of the Aquatic and Coastal Sciences Program, at Montclair State University. Dr. Bologna received a Master's degree in Oceanography from the University of Maine and a Ph.D. in Marine Science from the University of South Alabama. His research expertise lies within marine ecology with an emphasis on Seagrass Communities and Gelatinous Zooplankton. His research into the recent expansion of sea nettles addresses the distribution and abundance of gelatinous zooplankton and development of real-time PCR methods for bloom detection and prediction. Dr. Bologna is also the current president of the New Jersey Academy of Sciences.
Mark McPeek, PhD ‘89
Mark McPeek is a biological sciences professor at Dartmouth College and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2008. He recently became Editor-In- Chief of the American Naturalist.
Sunshine Menezes, BS '95
Sunshine Menezes is executive director of the Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting at the University of Rhode Island.
Jennifer Neuwald, BS ‘95
Jennifer Neuwald earned her PhD in Biology from Washington University in 2008 and is a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology at Iowa State University.
Toni Lyn Morelli, BS '97
Toni Lyn Morelli is a research ecologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service. After graduating from MSU, she obtained a Ph.D in Ecology and Evolution from Stony Brook University and also conducted behavioral, ecological, and genetics research on endangered lemurs in Madagascar. Morelli now works with the USDA Forest Service to provide the latest climate change science to national forest managers.
Rebecca Pratt, BS '97
Rebecca Pratt is an associate professor of anatomy in the MSU College of Osteopathic Medicine, Department of Radiology, Division of Anatomy; as well as lab director and manager of the gross anatomy laboratories for all four MSU satillite College of Human Medicine and College of Osteopathic Medicine campuses.
Merritt G. Gillilland III, BS '99, MS '02, PhD '06
Merritt Gillilland is an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan Medical School, Department of Internal Medicine. Gillilland investigates the community ecology of the gut microbiota and the effects of smoking and nicotine on the gut and lung microbiota.
Justin Blair Miller, BS '99
Justin Miller joined DENSO International America, Inc. as their in-house counsel for intellectual properties. He works with engineers to develop more safe, efficient and environmentally friendly components for hybrid vehicles. DENSO supports MSU with grants in development of MSU's HEV (hybrid electric vehicles).
Shannon Soltysiak, BS '02
Shannon Soltysiak earned an M.S. degree in Forensic Science and now works for the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner in the Department of Forensic Biology as a Criminalist III.
Michael C. Davison, BS '03
Michael Davison received a DVM degree from Mississippi State University in 2009 and is currently practicing veterinary medicine in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Dr. Davison works in private practice treating dogs, cats, horses, and cattle.
Laura Sams, BS ‘00, MS ‘03, and Robert Sams, BS ‘03
The Sams siblings released the wildlife film The Riddle in a Bottle and children’s book A Pirate’s Quest. They have been traveling the country performing educational assemblies using the book and movie to inspire children to create their own stories about the natural world. They have developed films on sharks and woodland animals - based on the children’s book "First Snow in the Woods".
Karen Kapheim, BS '01
Karen Kapheim is a doctoral student studying ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA. Her research is on the evolutionary origins of social behavior. She has recently completed her study of Megalopta genalis, a nocturnal sweat bee, on Barro Colorado Island in the Republic of Panama.
Craig Stricker, PhD ‘03
Craig Stricker is a research ecologist with the USGS Fort Collins Science Center and one of the principal investigators at the Stable Isotope Laboratory in Lakewood, Colorado. His recent studies include the nutritional ecology of salmonids and mammals (brown bears, wolves, sea lions), global change biology, and the biogeochemistry of sulfur as it pertains to mercury methylation.
David Dimitrie, BS '05
David Dimitrie is a herpetologist with Green Diamond Resource Company in northern California. He also served as coordinator of the 2011 Year of the Turtle conservation effort, and will coordinate the 2012 Year of the Lizard conservation effort.
Erica Garcia, PhD ‘06
Erica Garcia is a research Fellow at the Tropical Rivers and Coastal Knowledge Research Hub (TRaCK), Charles Darwin University, Australia. Garcia’s recent studies include the importance of key riverine species in influencing carbon and nutrient flow to higher trophic levels in both aquatic and terrestrial environments in the wet/dry tropics of northern Australia.
Danielle Salvatore, BS '06
Danielle Salvatore is a marine mammal (dolphin) trainer at Marineland, in St. Augustine, Fla. Salvatore works in the area of dolphin conservation, and trains and cares for twelve Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphins, ranging in age from newborn calves to a fifty-six year old dolphin (the oldest known dolphin in any zoo or aquarium).
Aaron Tarone, PhD '07
After completing postdoctoral work at the University of Southern California in the molecular and computational biology program, Aaron Tarone accepted an assistant professorship in the entomology department, Texas A&M University. Tarone will be teaching undergraduate Forensic and Investigative Science courses. His research focus is the evolutionary ecology and developmental biology of blowflies: primary successional species on carrion and/or parasites of vertebrates.
Katherine Leitch, BS ‘08
Katherine Leitch received a Churchill Scholarship and is enjoying life in England. She is in a research-based MPhil program studying human reproductive biology at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physiology, Development, and Neuroscience.
Timothy Fredricks, PhD '09
Timothy Fredricks has accepted a postdoctoral position with Bayer CropScience as an avian toxicologist, in Kansas.
Stephanie Schmitt, BS '10
Stephanie Schmitt is a marine mammal assistant trainer for the US Navy at the Bangor Washington base. The US Navy uses bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions for the mark-6 mod 2 swimmer defense system.
Ben Dantzer, PhD '12
Ben Dantzer is a postdoctoral research associate for the Large Animal Research Group, Department of Zoology, at the University of Cambridge. The focus of his work is on understanding the origins of individual differences in cooperative behavior in meerkats in the Kalahari Desert.
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We want to hear from you! Send us your news at: zoology@msu.edu. or Department of Zoology, 203 Natural Science Building, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824-1115