Congratulations to Dr. Florence Schmieg and Ms. Betsy Reigle. This summer our department gathered to celebrate the promotion of Dr. Schmieg to Associate Professor and Ms. Reigle's thirty years of service to UD. Dr. Schmieg joined our faculty in 1989. She developed the Experimental Molecular Biology laboratory course and regularly teaches Introductory Biology as well as Molecular Biology of the Cell. Many of our alumni are familiar with her work in pre-health advisement. Dr. Schmieg has been the chairperson of the Health Science Advisement and Evaluation Committee (HSAEC) since 1997 and served as Director of Medical Scholars from 2002-2008. Ms. Reigle joined our department in 1979 back when we were the School of Life and Health Sciences and included not just Biology, but also Medical Technology and Physical Therapy. Her job encompasses the financial and human resources realm of the university. Through the years that Ms. Reigle has been with us, she has had to learn new technology and has taken on additional responsibilities. She has consistently done this with a professionalism and graciousness that is greatly appreciated by our faculty. We thank both Dr. Schmieg and Ms. Reigle for their years of service. Their dedication, positive attitude and commitment help make our department great.

The department warmly welcomes back Dr. Deborah Allen, Associate Professor, who has returned from a 3-year leave of absence on loan to the National Science Foundation (NSF). As a Program Director in NSF's Division of Undergraduate Education, she organized and managed the peer review process for grant proposals, made decisions about which proposals received funding, and interacted with the directors of the funded projects to help them conduct them successfully. Dr. Allen also represented the agency at society meetings, gave workshops to help faculty write effective grant proposals, and served on various committees that worked on educational issues and projects that cut across the interests of several federal agencies. Highlights of her time in the Washington, DC area (in addition to working at NSF) included meeting former President Clinton at an inaugural ball and attending Senate briefings on educational issues and reform initiatives. Long an advocate of innovative undergraduate teaching methods, Dr. Allen is back in the classroom this fall teaching Introductory Biology.

We are extremely pleased to have recruited Dr. Salil Lachke, a developmental biologist, to our faculty. Dr. Lachke will expand our training program in systems biology of mammalian organ development and disease. Dr. Lachke holds a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Iowa and completed his post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women's Hospital, in Boston. He served as an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and lectured at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine before joining the faculty at the University of Delaware in September 2011.

Dr. Lachke uses animal models, human genetics and systems-based approaches to investigate gene regulation during cell differentiation in the vertebrate lens. Lens transparency is the outcome of a specialized differentiation program that occurs throughout our life. Disruption of this program can result in the formation of cataracts - the most common cause of blindness worldwide.  Read more...