Faculty Profiles
Eric Bollinger
Dr. Bollinger'senvironmental research involves the impact of habitat fragmentation on birds. More specifically the impact of habitat edges on grassland birds and their use of agricultural habitats.
Barbara Carlsward
Dr. Carlsward’s primary research interests are plant structure and how it relates to evolution. Most of her work has involved the orchid family but other current projects include Polygalaceae and various angiosperm clades. She is also interested in structural plasticity and how plants adapt to their environment, especially as it relates to leaf anatomy and morphology.
Janice Coons
Dr. Coons' interests include plant physiology and horticulture, specifically the mechanisms which plants use to tolerate environmental stress. She has worked with several vegetable crops and several environmental stresses (low/high temperature, salt, wind, air pollution). Much of her work is in seed physiology.
Steven Daniel
Dr. Daniel's specialty areas are anaerobic microbiology, microbial physiology, environmental microbiology, and microbial ecology. His general research interests include the ecological and metabolic roles that microorganisms, especially anaerobic bacteria, play in the turnover of matter and energy in various environmental systems such as the human/animal guts, soils, and sediments.
Karen Gaines
Dr. Gaines’ research interests primarily focus on wildlife toxicology at the landscape level. Most of her work involves developing spatial models that predict how different wildlife species may be exposed to contaminants such as radionuclides, metals and organics and how that may impact environmental health.
Billy Hung
Dr. Hung’s research focuses on several aspects of the microbiology in acidic conditions including: What are the physiological and biochemical processes that allow these organisms to take advantage of the acidic environment? How do these organisms function as isolates and as members of a community to colonize these niches? What can we learn of responses to acid to enhance our understanding of gastrointestinal pathogens in humans? His lab is also interested in applying the knowledge we learn of these organisms to understand how beneficial microbes interact with plants in unfavorable soil conditions, such as soil that is acidic or that is contaminated with heavy metals.
Jeff Laursen
Dr. Laursen'sresearch interests deal with host/parasite interactions at the ecological and cellular levels. Current projects are investigating the interactions of pollutants and ecological stressors with parasite populations, and the potential to use parasite assemblages as indicators of habitat quality.
Marina Marjanovic
Dr. Marjanovic is animal physiologist with specific interest in comparative and adaptational physiology. She studies the cellular mechanisms of freeze-tolerance (frogs and turtles) and freeze-avoidance (Antarctic fish) in vertebrates, and physiological adaptations in mammalian hibernation. She relates changes at the cellular level to temperature sensitivity of the whole organism, which has direct application to the conservation of amphibians and reptiles in temperate climates.
Scott Meiners
Dr. Meiners'research focuses on the vegetation dynamics and regeneration in general. While most of his work examines succession inabandoned agricultural landandthe controls and consequences of exotic species invasions, his students have worked on a variety of environmental issues including: forest edge effects, habitat fragmentation impacts on population vigor and ecological restoration.
Andrew Methven
Dr.Methven is a mycologist and lichenologist with interests in systematics, ecology, and phylogeny of mushrooms and lichens. Included among his environmentally related research interests are ongoing studies of the effects of forest alteration on the presence, abundance and distribution of mushrooms and the effects of fragmented ecosystems on lichen occurrence and distribution.
Stephen Mullin
Dr. Mullin'sinterests center on community ecology, specifically the dynamics of predator-prey relationships. His on-going research addresses how the species within a community respond to the addition or removal of other species (either predator or prey).He examines these questions from behavioral, physiological, and population-level aspects.
Jim Novak
Dr. Novak’s research interests are in ecological genetics. Since ecological genetics involves the interaction of organisms with their environment he also utilizes the effects of anthropogenic stressors to look at genotoxic effects on wildlife populations. Currently he is working on the use of organismal form components as tools for the management of wildlife populations and as effects biomarkers in ecotoxicological studies.
Henry Owen
Dr. Owen’s research experiences and interests are in the use of cell, tissue, and organ culture techniques for plant propagation, regeneration, conservation, and genetic improvement, and in field and laboratory seed physiology studies of endangered, threatened, native, or invasive Illinois species. To date, undergraduate and graduate student projects have focused on several native endangered & threatened species as well as exotic and invasive species.
Charles Pederson
While Dr. Pederson's primary teaching and research interests are in algal ecology and physiology, he also has considerable expertise in the areas of water quality and ecotoxicology. His research is in the field of aquatic ecology with emphasis on lake restoration and the use of algae as biological monitors of pollution.
Paul Switzer
Dr. Switzer's research interests are wide-ranging within animal behavior and behavioral ecology. His research covers mating systems, social behavior, aggressive behavior, and the selection of locations and habitats (for breeding, foraging, or roosting habitat). In particular, he is interested in how an individual's previous experience affects these aspects of its behavior.
Gordon Tucker
A vascular plant systematist, Dr. Tucker is a specialist on the grass and sedge families. He serves as curator of the Stover-Ebinger Herbarium. He has strong interests in field botany and has conducted inventories for The Nature Conservancy, the Army Corps of Engineers, Illinois Dept. of Natural Resources and other agencies.
