Biology Welcomes New Faculty

Husband-wife team bring new strengths to the department

The biology department welcomes two new faculty this year, Derek Gingerich and Jamie Lyman Gingerich, a husband and wife team who just completed their post-doctoral work at the UW-Madison.  Both were born and raised in upstate New York but took different paths getting here. 

Jamie earned a B.A. from Kalamazoo College with a major in biology and a minor in Spanish, before coming to UW-Madison for her doctorate.  In 2006, she earned her Ph.D. from UW-Madison’s program in Genetics.  For her thesis, she studied the role of maternal factors (mRNAs and proteins deposited in the egg by the mother) in zebrafish development.  She followed this up by doing post-doctoral research in the laboratory of Maureen Barr (School of Pharmacy at UW-Madison) that focused on the genetics of cilia form and function in the nematode, C. elegans.

Derek graduated with a B.S. from Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA, majoring in biology and biochemistry.  In 2002 he earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University in Biochemistry, Molecular, and Cell Biology and his doctoral thesis focused on plant hormone perception and signaling.  Before coming to UW-Eau Claire he was a post-doctoral researcher at UW-Madison’s Department of Genetics studying targeted protein degradation in plants.  His current research uses genetic, molecular, and bioinformatics approaches to investigate protein degradation in Arabidopsis thaliana, a commonly used “model” plant related to cabbage and radish.