Stories

One in eight women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. It is the most common cancer among women globally, with more than 2 million new cases each year according to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. TCU biology professor Mikaela Stewart is innovating the way we research breast cancer in efforts to transform these harrowing statistics into stories of victory.

CSE faculty and students traveled to Pittsburgh in November to present in the North American meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), with two works receiving awards.

Carnivorous plants have a wild array of adaptations that help them flourish in nutrient-poor environments, which include strategies to lure prey to their traps. John Horner, TCU biology professor, is an evolutionary ecologist with research interests in plant-insect interactions. Here he answers some in-depth questions about these fascinating plants.

Biology graduate student, Kimberlee Whitmore, biology alumna, Maddy Hannappel, and Matt Chumchal, biology professor and director of the Pre-Health Professions Institute, worked with a team of high school students and their teacher, Andrew Brinker, from the Texas Academy of Biomedical Sciences. They collected dragonflies for the Dragonfly Mercury Project at the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge.

Matt Chumchal, TCU professor of biology, along with eight coauthors, recently had a paper, "Use of Riparian Spiders as Sentinels of Persistent and Bioavailable Chemical Contaminants in Aquatic Ecosystems: A Review," published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (ET&C), an international scientific journal. The article reviews the use of riparian spiders as sentinels of environmental pollution, and suggests the development of national-scale programs to monitor chemical contaminants in aquatic ecosystems using spiders.

Associate professor of biology, Marlo Jeffries, and co-PI Dalton Allen (M.S. Biology 2021, Ph.D. Biology 2024) were awarded a $10,164 grant from the American Association of Laboratory Animal Sciences (AALAS) to support portions of Allen's dissertation work that aims to determine whether toxicological tests that feature marine fish embryos or invertebrates can replace those that use marine fish larvae.

Jessica Boyce ’20 graduated from TCU with a biology major and minors in Spanish and anthropology. Boyce is from Charlotte, North Carolina, and came to TCU on the pre-health track. After graduating last year, she used her EMT license to volunteer with an organization in Mexico during her gap year before entering physician’s assistant school this May.

Ally Lunich and Sawyer Diaz, two pre-health students, have been working to create volunteer opportunities for their peers during the pandemic. Lunich and Diaz recently put together a list of more than 40 charitable and non-profit organizations, both locally and nationally, to provide virtual volunteering opportunities to pre-health students.

Lisa Nash ’87 graduated from TCU with a degree in biology. Originally from Brock, Texas, a small town just west of Fort Worth, she grew up hearing about TCU. Since she was a small child, Nash always knew she wanted to be a doctor. The reputation of the pre-health program and the offer of a full scholarship made Nash choose to pursue her education at TCU. Nash developed a virtual family medicine preceptorship (FMP) for TCU students.