News and Publications

Interview with Robert J. “Bob” Schmitz, who earned his B.Sc. in MCB at the University of Arizona in 2002. Today, he is a Distinguished Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Genetics at the University of Georgia.

Every fall, MCB welcomes high-school students and their teachers for lab tours and conversations with faculty, current students and advisers. This October, 122 high-school junios and seniors from nine schools in Tucson and Chandler, accompanied by 13 teachers, visited campus for the Meet MCB! open house.

Most of the cells in our bodies are in a “sleeping” state known as quiescence. PhD student Rodrigo de la Vega is trying to find out how different drugs influence the dormancy and waking up of these cells.

Imagine diagnosing disease not just from genes or proteins, but from a cell’s mechanical fingerprint—its stiffness, tension, and microscopic architecture. That’s the future PhD student Robert Shaw is working toward.

Faculty members, postdoctoral scholars and research associates will be recognized at the 2026 Luminaries: Outstanding Faculty Awards ceremony. Susan Hester received the University of Arizona Foundation Leicester and Kathryn Sherrill Creative Teaching Award.

Publication in the journal Genes & Development, lead author Abhinav Sur, MCB: A conserved Notch-Meis1-Pbx cascade specifies secretory progenitors into spatially diverse intestinal best4+ cells

Biochemistry major Kylie Ernst was, in her own words, "lucky enough to be able to join Dr. Andrew Paek’s lab during spring of my freshman year." Her research has to do with how breast cancer cells “decide” to live or die under different conditions.

Kaia Mount reflects on her experience in the BRAVO! summer program that took her to Brussels - and turned out to be a growth opportunity in and outside the lab.

Elisabeth Goodin studies fruitflies for her PhD - and shares the personal background that got her interested in epigenetics.