Biotechnology

David P. Clark did his graduate work on bacterial antibiotic resistance to earn his Ph.D. from Bristol University, England. He later crossed the Atlantic to work as a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University and then the University of Illinois. Dr Clark recently retired from teaching Molecular Biology and Bacterial Physiology at Southern Illinois University which he joined in 1981. His research into the Regulation of Alcohol Fermentation in E. coli was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, from 1982 till 2007. In 1991 he received a Royal Society Guest Research Fellowship to work at Sheffield University, England while on sabbatical leave.

Nanette J. Pazdernik has devoted her career to the understanding of molecular biology and biotechnology, and then disseminating that knowledge by writing and teaching. She is a co-author of Biotechnology, 2nd edition and Molecular Biology, 3rd edition, with Dr. David P. Clark and Dr. Michelle McGehee. Both the second and third edition of Molecular Biology won a Texty award from the Textbook and Academic Authors Association. She has taught courses in General Biology, Genetics, as well as Anatomy and Physiology at Southwestern Illinois College, McKendree University, and Harris-Stowe University. She received her BA in Biology from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, and her PhD in Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology and Genetics from the University of Minnesota. Her doctoral thesis studied protein structure-function relationships. Following her degrees, she investigated the signal transduction pathways that control apoptosis and immunity at Indiana University School of Medicine. In a second post-doctoral position, she studied the various molecules that maintain the stem cell niche in the Department of Genetics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO. Currently, Dr. Pazdernik works in the biotech industry as a scientific writer.

Michelle R. McGehee earned a BA in Microbiology in 2000 and a PhD in Molecular Biology, Microbiology, and Biochemistry in 2005, both from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, USA. Her graduate research focused on the genetic and biochemical regulation of lactate fermentation in Escherichia coli. Michelle is currently an assistant academic dean and biology professor at a college in Texas, where she teaches courses in both microbiology and genetics.

Bethany A. Rader received a BS in Botany from the University of Wisconsin in 1999, and a PhD in Biology from the University of Oregon in 2006. Her current research explores mechanisms of host tolerance to beneficial bacterial symbionts and the potentially harmful molecules they produce. She continues her research as an associate professor at Southern Illinois University in the Microbiology Program where she has mentored undergraduate, Masters, and PhD students.