Graduate Programs

Our faculty research and graduate training programs are inextricably intertwined. The research component of graduate training occurs in world-class faculty laboratories and field sites, while the instructional component occurs in literature-driven graduate seminars led by experts at the frontiers of their field.

Our research programs are focused in three highly interrelated areas at the cutting edge of modern biology

genetic, cellular and developmental biology
neurobiology and the regulation of behavior
evolutionary biology and ecology

Although focused, these research programs simultaneously integrate across all levels of biological organization from organelles to populations and use a wide variety of organisms in the laboratory and in the field. Most of our faculty members work at the interfaces between these three areas and we encourage our graduate students to do likewise.

One of the great strengths of the MU campus is a level of interdisciplinary cooperation in research and education found at very few other institutions. Many of our graduate students are engaged in collaborative projects with students and faculty in interdisciplinary degree programs (the Interdisciplinary Plant Group, the Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Program, the Genetics Area Program, and the Conservation Biology Program) as well as multiple Colleges and Schools.

Graduate Student Highlights

Andrew Cox: Passion wins national fellowship. (opens new window)

Kate Hertweck: Are Some Plants Genetically Programmed to Be Rare?

Paul Ladipo: Show Me Success! (pdf)

Junxia Min: Combating cellular resistance to a chemotherapeutic drug. (opens new window)

Chris Pierret: Adult stem cells could have common origin.

Tracy Green Rittenhouse: Assisting Amphibians.