Adjunct Faculty
The Biology Department is fortunate to have many scientists associated with it who serve in diverse capacities to enhance the department's educational and research missions. In many cases, research, adjunct or visiting faculty members can serve as undergraduate advisors, professors-of-record for graduate or undergraduate independent study, graduate committee members and, at the discretion of a core faculty member, as co-chairs of graduate student committees.
Professors
- Karl M. Johnson—M.D., University of Rochester, 1956. Zoonotic viral epidemiology and ecology, hantaviruses and arenaviruses. kjohnson@sevilleta.unm.edu
- Alan Perelson—Ph.D. (Biophysics), University of California at Berkeley, 1972. Member of UNM Dept. of Biology's CETI Program. Member of the Science Board and head of the Theoretical Immunology Program at the Santa Fe Institute. Mathematical and theoretical biology, with an emphasis on problems in immunology, virology, and cell and molecular biology. asp@lanl.gov
- Steven Phillips—Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, 1967. Associate Director and co-PI of the Initiative to Maximize Student Diversity (IMSD), a student research program supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. nmsleep@unm.edu
- Stephen T. Ross—Ph.D., University of South Florida, 1974. Curator Emeritus, Division of Fishes, Museum of Southwestern Biology. Ecological and evolutionary relationships of fishes. stross1@unm.edu
- Richard T. Sayre–Ph.D. (Biology), University of Iowa, 1978. Senior Research Scientist, Los Alamos National Laboratory, & Director, Biolabs, New Mexico Consortium, Los Alamos, NM. Scientific Director, Center for Advanced Biofuel Systems and National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts. Former Director of BioCassava Plus. rsayre@newmexicoconsortium.org
- Ursula Shepherd—Community ecology and biogeography of mammals; biodiversity and evolutionary biology. ursula@sevilleta.unm.edu
Associate Professors
- David J. Hafner—Ph.D. (Biology), University of New Mexico 1981. Chair, Bioscience Department, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science . Phylogeography of mammals; evolution of North American deserts; conservation issues in southwestern North America. dhafner@nmmnh.state.nm.us
- Mimi E. Lam—Ph.D. (Theoretical Chemistry and Physics), Dalhousie University, 1995. Current research explores the epistemological convergence of evolutionary human cognition and traditional ecological knowledge with quantum and statistical mechanics. Educational philosophies incorporate culturally responsive, holistic, experiential curricula within a meta-institutional ecosystem-themed research and educational paradigm. mlam@unm.edu
- Jeffrey C. Nekola—Ph.D. (Ecology), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1994. Community and theoretical ecology; macroecology; biogeography; conservation biology; plant, lepidopteran, and land snail ecology; land snail taxonomy and molecular phylogenetics. jnekola@unm.edu
- Andreas Wagner—Ph.D. (Biology), Yale University, 1995. Evolution of gene networks; evolution of developmental pathways; redundant gene functions and their evolution; architecture of biochemical networks; gene network reconstruction; evolution of modularity and robustness in metabolic networks, developmental pathways, and RNA; whole genome analysis of transcriptional regulatory regions. wagnera@unm.edu
Assistant Professors
- Lee Fitzgerald—Conservation biology; Herpetology; Ecology. Assistant Professor, Curator of Amphibians and Reptiles, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station TX 77843-2258. Phone: 409-845-5777. lfitzgerald@tamu.edu
- Michael M. Fuller—Ph.D. (Biology), The University of New Mexico, 2004. Forest ecology and management; urban forestry; pest species population ecology, impacts, and control; spatial ecology; computational ecology and mathematical modeling. mmfuller@unm.edu
- William S. Hlavacek—Ph.D. (Chemical Engineering), University of Michigan, 1996. Member of UNM Department of Biology’s CETI (Center for Evolutionary & Theoretical Immunology) Program. Research interests: models of signal-transduction systems, biophysics of ligand-receptor interactions, design principles of biological regulatory systems, modeling and reconstruction of genetic regulatory and metabolic networks in bacteria, and computational methods and software/database tools relevant for modeling biological systems (BioNetGen). wish@lanl.gov
- Patricia Mehlhop—Conservation biology; animal ecology; monitoring populations for change; avian and invertebrate community structure. pmehlhop@unm.edu
- Nancy Nicolai—Ph.D. (Rangeland Ecology), Texas A&M University, 2005. My research focuses on ecosystem sustainability tempered by biotic interactions; much of my work explores the mechanisms and dynamics of plant-animal interactions in arid environments. Recent work seeks to understand if animal soil engineering and granivory facilitate grassland communities at multiple landscape scales, approached using field manipulative experiments, simulation modeling, and spatial statistics. At Sevilleta LTER, I am conducting preliminary studies to understand interacting effects of fire and harvester ant or kangaroo rat mounds.nnicolai@unm.edu
- Andrea Porras-Alfaro—Ph.D. (Biology), The University of New Mexico, 2008. Assistant Professor, Western Illinois University. Fungal Molecular Ecology Lab: soil fungal communities and plant–fungal systems (endophytes, mycorrhizae, pathogens): diversity, function and response to global change. a-porras-alfaro@wiu.edu
- Deborah Ulinski Potter—Ph.D. (Biology), The University of New Mexico, 1996. Physical Scientist/Ecology and Air Resources, USDA Forest Service, Southwestern Region, Watershed and Air Management, 333 Broadway Blvd. SE, Albuquerque, NM. Phone: 842-3143. Ecosystem ecology, limnology, landscape ecology, global change, natural resource management. ulinski@unm.edu
- Ernest W. Valdez—Ph.D. (Biology), The University of New Mexico, 2006. Wildlife biologist, U.S.G.S. Arid Lands Field Station. Natural history, taxonomy, functional morphology, food habits, ectoparasites, and ecology of small mammals, with an emphasis on bats. ernie@usgs.gov
- Wade Wilson—Ph.D. (Biology), The University of New Mexico, 2008. Immune genes of the Rio Grand cutthroat trout. Adjunct Assistant Professor, Dept. of Biology, UNM. wwilson@unm.edu
Visiting
- Timothy Keitt—Visiting Assistant Professor. Ph.D. (Biology), The University of New Mexico, 1995. Former Fellow of the Santa Fe Institute. Landscape and theoretical ecology. keitt@nceas.ucsb.edu
- Diana E. Northup—Visiting Associate Professor, Ph.D. (Biology), The University of New Mexico, 2002. Research interests include: investigating (1) how microbes help form the colorful ferromanganese deposits that coat the walls of Lechuguilla and Spider Cave in Carlsbad Caverns National Park; (2) how microbes participate in the precipitation of calcium carbonate formations called pool fingers; (3) the microbial diversity located in the hydrogen sulfide cave, Cueva de las Sardinas in Tabasco, Mexico, (4) the microbial basis of White Nose Syndrome in bats and its potential impact on New Mexico cave roosting bats, and (5) antibiotic production by cave bacteria. dnorthup@unm.edu