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Biology is one of four departments (along with Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics) that make up the University's College of Science. We conduct basic research, teach undergraduate courses for majors and nonmajors, and train graduate students and postdocs. We view these activities as inseparable, and we try to excel at all of them. The complete spectrum of biological phenomena and disciplines, from biochemistry through global change, is represented in the research interests of faculty, and in the curriculum. We offer exceptional opportunities for students who want to think, work and collaborate across levels of biological organization and styles of research. The links below lead to information about research projects and groups in our areas of special strength.
Some facts and figures. There are currently 42 regular faculty in the Department and a similar number of auxiliary faculty. Of the regular faculty, five have been honored by promotion to the rank of Distinguished Professor, three have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, two have received MacArthur Fellowships (as have two auxiliary faculty), and many others have been recognized by a variety of prestigious awards and fellowships. Mario Capecchi (currently Distinguished Professor of Biology and Human Genetics) recently won a Nobel Prize for work done while he was a full-time member of Biology. The Department is home to about 110 graduate students, 45 postdoctoral fellows, and over 1000 undergraduate majors (more than twice the number majoring in Chemistry, Mathematics, and Physics combined). Many undergraduates work in research labs, which are supported by approximately 10 million dollars per year in extramural funding. The Department is housed in three major and two minor buildings that together provide more than 150,000 square feet of laboratory and classroom space. One of the these buildings (The Aline Wilmot Skaggs Building) was completed in 1997. It houses 15 faculty research groups and contains both a small auditorium (now the site of most research seminars) and a large auditorium (for the largest classes and public talks). Thanks to a generous grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), we have recently constructed a state-of-the-art teaching laboratory in the main Biology Building. A little history. Until slightly more than thirty years ago, there were five or six small departments devoted to studies of biological subjects at the University of Utah. (It seems that each full professor had a Department of his own, and one Department had but a single faculty member!) The faculty taught a great deal and somehow carried on research projects with minimal funding and primitive laboratory facilities. (See Professor Emeritus John Spikes' BioNews article on "The Biology Department in 1948".) Then in the late 1960s a wise President named James Fletcher (later NASA's chief administrator) decided to stimulate biological research at the University. He merged the several exisiting biological science departments into a unified Department of Biology, and then recruited a new Chair of remarkable stature, energy, and wisdom, Gordon Lark, who is still with us as Distinguished Professor Emeritus. More than any other single individual, Lark is responsible for the rise of modern biology at the University of Utah. Beginning in 1969, Gordon recruited many brilliant young faculty who lived and breathed a diversity of research interests including molecular biology and theoretical ecology, which had previously been poorly represented at the University. Adding to the considerable strength already present in several relatively traditional areas of biology, these new recruits helped to established the excellent reputation that the Department enjoys to this day, in a wide range of disciplines. Around 1980 the Department was cited by some learned body (we forget which one) as the most improved department in the country during the previous five years. And it continued to get better. Gordon Lark must also be credited with at least three other developments that led to the huge and excellent biological sciences community that distinguishes the University today. First, in early 1970 Gordon helped to recruit Don Summers to chair the old Department of Microbiology at the medical school. Summers made a number of superb appointments, and the renamed Department of Cellular, Viral and Molecular Biology established modern molecular biology in the School of Medicine. Second, in the late 1970s Gordon helped to recruit Ray Gesteland, who established the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) branch on campus. During its humble beginnings, this Institute was housed in a single laboratory in the basement of the Life Sciences Building (the smallest and oldest of Biology's three "major" buildings). Later the HHMI moved to a magnificent new palace on upper campus, the Eccles Institute of Human Genetics, famous for its spiral staircase and auditorium with etched-glass facsimiles of Gregor Mendel's peas. Third, Gordon played a key role in establishing the University's unique contribution to "the new human genetics" when he arranged a meeting between a soon-to-be-recruited faculty member (Mark Skolnick, now Scientific Director of Myriad Genetics) and an authority of the LDS church. In recent years Biology has lost remarkably few faculty to other universities, but four (in addition to Ray Gesteland, now University Vice President for Research) have migrated to departments in the School of Medicine. Marty Rechsteiner was appointed Co-Chair of Biochemistry, Mario Capecchi moved to Human Genetics as an HHMI investigator, Mary Beckerle joined the new Huntsman Cancer Institute (where she is now Senior Director of Laboratory Research), and Janet Shaw recently joined the Department of Biochemistry. All maintain active relationships with Biology, and most are still members of the faculty. Today Biology is just one of many biological sciences departments on campus, which collectively make up a very large and vibrant biosciences community. We remain by far the broadest and most interdisciplinary department, with close ties to all the others in which biology is practiced, including Anthropology, Bioengineering, Chemistry, Geology, Mathematics, and Psychology, in addition to those in the School of Medicine. We were recently ranked highly in ecology and evolutionary biology, on the one hand, and in cellular and molecular biology, on the other, by a National Academy survey of research departments throughout the country. Looking to the future, we hope soon to begin the first real expansion of the faculty in decades, in part through our role in establishing a new interdepartmental graduate program in Microbiology, which will complement the existing programs in Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, and Neurosciences, and in part through a new state-wide Biotechnology Initiative. The 21st century will be the century of biology, and we are fortunate indeed that our unique history as a department has prepared us so well for the challenges and opportunities to come. David R. Wolstenholme Former Chair (2x), Department of Biology |