Department of Life Sciences in the College of Science

Department of Life Sciences

Kam Tang, Ph.D.

Professor of Biology and Department Chair

Office: TH 309C
Phone: (361) 825-4164
Email: kamwing.tang@tamucc.edu

Benjamin Walther, Ph.D.

Professor and Assistant Chair

Office: TH 336
Phone: (361) 825-4168
Email: benjamin.walther@tamucc.edu
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/waltherfishlab/

Fish migration ecology; population connectivity; habitat use; food web dynamics; carbonate chemistry

Ken Brown

Senior Administrative Assistant

Office: TH 309E
Phone: (361) 825-3907
Email: kenneth.brown@tamucc.edu

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Faculty in the Department of Life Sciences

Keisha Bahr, Ph.D.

Professor & Harte Research Institute Chair

Office: TH 134
Phone: (361) 825-3707
Email: keisha.bahr@tamucc.edu
Website: https://www.bahrlab.com

Coral Reef Ecology, Eco-physiology; Climate Change Ecology; Ocean acidification and Carbonate Chemistry; Reef diversity, distribution, and community level structure and processes; Science Communication.

Loretta Battaglia, Ph.D.

Professor & Director of Center for Coastal Studies

Office: NRC 3213
Phone: (361) 825-2768
Email: loretta.battaglia@tamucc.edu

Coastal ecosystems; invasive species; wetland plant communities; multivariate statistics

Chris Bird, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Biology

Office: TH 234
Phone: (361) 825-6024
Email: chris.bird@tamucc.edu
Website: https://birdlab.tamucc.edu

Molecular Ecology, Evolution, Population Genetics, Marine Biology, Community Ecology, Fisheries Management, Invertebrate Zoology, Biotechnology

Gregory Buck, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Office: TH 236
Phone: (361) 825-3717
Email: gregory.buck@tamucc.edu

Molecular biology of prokaryotes; medical microbiology; virology; science education

Kirk Cammarata, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Biology

Office: TH 338
Phone: (361) 825-2468
Email: kirk.cammarata@tamucc.edu
Website: https://faculty.tamucc.edu/cammarat

Physiology/biochemistry/molecular biology of seagrass stress responses to anthropogenic impacts; epiphyte dynamics and interactions with seagrasses

Daniel Coffey, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Biology-Fisheries & Mariculture

Office: TH 232
Phone: (361) 825-5883
Email: daniel.coffey@tamucc.edu

Sharon Derrick D-ABFA, Ph.D.

Associate Professor and Forensics Coordinator

Office: TH 239
Phone: (361) 825-3637
Email: sharon.derrick@tamucc.edu

Forensic personal identification from the skeleton and bone trauma analysis.

Janet Donaldson, Ph.D.

Professor

Office: FC 167
Phone: (361) 825-2751
Email: janet.donaldson@tamucc.edu

Stella Doyungan, Ph.D.

Professional Senior Professor

Office: TH 137
Phone: (361) 825-3686
Email: stella.doyungan@tamucc.edu

Microbiology

Dale Gawlik, Ph.D.

HRI Endowed Chair for Conservation and Biodiversity

Office: HRI 314A
Phone: (361) 825-2045
Email: dale.gawlik@tamucc.edu
Website: https://www.harte.org/research/conservation-biodiversity

Research interests: waterbird ecology and conservation, wetland and intertidal ecosystems, restoration ecology, and the use of birds in aquatic ecosystem management.

Chris Hollenbeck, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Fisheries and Mariculture

Office: TH 140
Phone: (361) 825-6022
Email: christopher.hollenbeck@tamucc.edu

Ivy Jones, Ph.D.

Professional Assistant Professor

Office: TH 133
Phone: (361) 825-3259
Email: ivy.jones@tamucc.edu

Yajuan Lin, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Marine Ecology

Office: TH 231
Phone: (361) 825-3657
Email: yajuan.lin@tamucc.edu
Website: https://yajuanlin.github.io/

Biological Oceanography, Microbial Ecology, Marine Biogeochemistry, Climate Change

Qianqian Liu, Ph.D.

Professional Assistant Professor of Biomedical Sciences

Office: TH 241
Phone: (361) 825-2891
Email: qianqian.liu@tamucc.edu

Candice Lumibao, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Biology

Office: TH 333
Phone: (361) 825-3477
Email: candice.lumibao@tamucc.edu
Website: https://candicelumibaolab.com/

Plant-microbe interactions in coastal marshes, rhizosphere and endosphere microbial ecology, genomics, plant phenotypic and genetic trait variations, effects of climatic and anthropogenic changes, ancient plant DNA

John Majoris, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Marine Biology

Office: TH 341
Phone: (361) 825-2369
Email: john.majoris@tamucc.edu

Cherie McCollough, Ph.D.

Professor of Science Education

Office: TH 337
Phone: (361) 825-3166
Email: cherie.mccollough@tamucc.edu

Science education; student retention; multicultural education; teacher mentoring and training; avian ecology and population biology

Shawn McCracken, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Biology

Office: TH 142
Phone: (361) 825-3303
Email: shawn.mccracken@tamucc.edu
Website: https://www.mccrackenlab.com

Dr. McCrackens interests lie in the ecological and evolutionary responses to environmental change at community to ecosystem scales, directed at the development of management strategies and policy to preserve landscape wildlife biodiversity.

Judy Metcalf, Ph.D.

Professional Associate Professor

Office: TH 136
Phone: (361) 825-3959
Email: judy.metcalf@tamucc.edu

Riccardo Mozzachiodi, Ph.D.

Professor of Neuroscience

Office: TH 335
Phone: (361) 825-3634
Email: riccardo.mozzachiodi@tamucc.edu

Neurobiology; biological basis of learning and memory; behavior

Tesneem Nusayr, Ph.D.

Professional Assistant Professor of Biomedical Sciences

Phone: (361) 825-2841
Email: tesneem.nusayr@tamucc.edu

Felix Omoruyi, Ph.D.

Professor of Clinical Laboratory Science

Office: TH 238
Phone: (361) 825-2473
Email: felix.omoruyi@tamucc.edu

Currently, research in my laboratory is centered on the biochemical changes in the red blood cell membrane and serum in fairly and poorly controlled diabetic patients relative to healthy control.

Dara Orbach, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Biology

Office: TH 340
Phone: (361) 825-3217
Email: dara.orbach@tamucc.edu
Website: https://daraorbach.weebly.com

Jennifer Pollack, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Marine Biology and HRI Chair for Coastal Conservation & Restoration

Office: HRI 210A
Phone: (361) 825-2041
Email: jennifer.pollack@tamucc.edu
Website: https://www.harte.org/research/coastal-conservation-restoration

Field research experience in temperate salt marsh creeks, semi-arid estuaries, and polar regions

David Portnoy, Ph.D.

Professor of Marine Biology

Office: TH 138
Phone: (361) 825-2859
Email: david.portnoy@tamucc.edu
Website: https://marinegenomicslab.tamucc.edu

Conservation genetics of exploited marine fishes, historical patterns of zoogeography, systematics and evolution of bony fishes and elasmobranchs, patterns of sexual selection, conflict and speciation.

Ed Proffitt, Ph.D.

Professor

Office: TH 139
Phone: (361) 825-2358
Email: ed.proffitt@tamucc.edu
Website: https://edproffitt.wixsite.com/coastal-ecology

Ecology of estuarine and marine plants and invertebrates; ecological genetics; experimental design and biometry; applying multivariate statistics to address large-scale problems

Frauke Seemann, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Marine Biomedical Science

Office: TH 332
Phone: (361) 825-2683
Email: frauke.seemann@tamucc.edu

Jim Silliman, Ph.D.

Professor of Chemistry

Office: NRC 3510
Phone: (361) 825-3718
Email: james.silliman@tamucc.edu

My research interests lie in the area of organic geochemistry. Within this interdisciplinary field, I currently have two main areas of emphasis listed below.

1. Climate and environmental change: Organic matter is especially sensitive to changes in environmental and climate conditions. The organic matter found in fresh-water and marine sediments records all of the changes that have occurred within the water column and watershed regions. The amount and type of organic matter can provide general data on depositional and preservational parameters. Analyzing for specific organic compounds contained in sedimentary organic matter (i.e. n-alkanes, PAHs, and fatty acids) enhances our understanding about variations in environmental and climate systems. Funding for this type of research has been provided by the Ocean Drilling Project for sediment samples collected off the coast of Peru by Dr. Thomas Naehr (J. Silliman: Co-PI).

2. Differences in organic geochemical practices: Sediment samples are not prepared consistently from lab to lab. Due to differences in sample preparation and extraction procedures, organic geochemical results can vary from study to study. Such differences are important to understand in order to compare results of one study to another. A comparison analysis is being carried out by contrasting results acquired from sediments collected from a northern temperate fresh-water lake to results obtained from a marine sediment collected in a subtropical setting with identical variations in sample pretreatment and extraction techniques. This research is being funded by a University Research Enhancement Grant from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (J. Silliman: PI).

Jean Sparks, Ph.D.

Professor
Chair, Department of Health Sciences

Office: TH 237
Phone: (361) 825-2359
Email: jean.sparks@tamucc.edu

Clinical laboratory science; hematology; botany

Greg Stunz, Ph.D.

Professor of Marine Biology and Endowed Chair for Fisheries and Ocean Health

Office: HRI 311C
Phone: (361) 825-3254
Email: greg.stunz@tamucc.edu

Marine biology, marine ecology, marine fisheries ecology, fisheries, estuarine ecology, environmental biology

M-Emad Tahtamouni, Ph.D.

Professional Assistant Professor

Office: TH 132
Phone: (361) 825-5819
Email: m-emad.tahtamouni@tamucc.edu

Jeffrey Turner, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Marine Biology

Office: TH 240
Phone: (361) 825-6206
Email: jeffrey.turner@tamucc.edu
Website: https://turnerlab.tamucc.edu

Microbial Ecology, Molecular Biology, Population Genetics, Evolution, Genomics, Metagenomics, connections between oceans and human health

Michael Wetz, Ph.D.

Professor of Marine Biology

Office: HRI 210B
Phone: (361) 825-2132
Email: michael.wetz@tamucc.edu
Website: https://www.harte.org/research/coastal-ecosystem-processes

Phytoplankton ecology, estuarine and coastal food webs and biogeochemical cycles, effects of climatic and anthropogenic change

Kim Withers, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Office: NRC 3205
Phone: (361) 825-5907
Email: kim.withers@tamucc.edu

Tidal flat ecology; invertebrates & nekton of tidal flats & marshes; shorebird habitat use on tidal flats in Laguna Madre & Corpus Christi Bay; mangrove-associated faunas; seagrass ecology & invertebrate communities; impacts of succession on juvenile fish communities; fisheries resources in Texas & Mexico

Wei Xu, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Marine Biomedical Science

Office: TH 339
Phone: (361) 825-2676
Email: wei.xu@tamucc.edu
Website: https://www.tamucc.edu/science/research/leh/wei-xu.php

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Staff in the Department of Life Sciences

Philip Jose

Laboratory Coordinator

Office: TH 143
Phone: (361) 825-5757
Email: philip.jose@tamucc.edu

Pedro Ramon

Laboratory Coordinator

Office: TH 210A
Phone: (361) 825-4073
Email: pedro.ramon@tamucc.edu

Susana Reyes

Administrative Assistant

Office: TH 309G
Phone: (361) 825-2005
Email: susana.reyes@tamucc.edu

Sarah Wood

Administrative Assistant

Office: TH 309F
Phone: (361) 825-2754
Email: sarah.wood@tamucc.edu

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Department of Life Sciences Directory