Global Disease Biology

Dr. Monfared is an Associate Professor of Teaching in the Molecular and Cellular Biology department. She enjoys doing scholarly research in her classroom and using data from students to see what works and doesn’t work in the classroom. She teaches BIS102 and BIS103 (both Biochemistry courses) regularly. She is also the co-Director of the FUSE program, which provides pedagogy training to graduate students who want to become professors. 

How did you decide to study Biology/pedagogy? 

Dr. Kenjiro Quides is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. His research interests are microbial evolution and ecology and strategies to improve student engagement, retention, and opportunities for collaborative learning. Dr. Quides teaches GDB major requirement MIC 102: Introductory Microbiology.

Dr. Karen Shaprio is an associate professor with the Department of Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology in the UC Davis school of Veterinary Medicine. Her research interests include transport and fate of zoonotic pathogens in watershed and coastal ecosystems. She teaches the GDB major requirement PMI 129Y: One Health: Human, Animal & Environment Interfaces.

Dr. Douglas Cook is a professor in Plant Pathology. He is also Director of Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Climate Resilient Chickpea. Dr. Cook's studies focus on chickpeas' and nitrogen fixing. He teaches one of the GDB major requirement Pathogen/Disease course options, GDB 103: Microbiome of People, Animals, & Plants.

This is a special pride month edition in our Professor Spotlight Series! Check out the other faculty and grad students featured in our June Pride Month Spotlight on our blog!

Dr. Woutrina Smith leads the multi-campus UCGHI Planetary Health Center of Expertise and has been part of the UCD School of Veterinary Medicine’s One Health Institute since its inception. Dr. Smith has One Health research projects in Africa and Asia, as well as in California, where multidisciplinary teams work together to solve complex population and planetary health problems in innovative ways. She teaches the GDB major requirement PMI 129Y: One Health Fundamentals.

Dr Ioannis Stergiopoulos is a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at UC Davis who studies microbial virulence and multidrug resistance mechanisms in fungal plant pathogens. In his studies, Dr. Stergiopoulos is using a systems biology-based approach that integrates comparative and functional genomics, with molecular evolutionary analyses, and practical field work. As a UCD Professor, he teaches one of the Pathogen/Disease courses in the GDB major, PLP 130 – Fungal Biology and Disease and the graduate-level course  PLP 224: Advanced Mycology (PLP 224).

Dr. Diana K. Davis is a geographer and veterinarian who specializes in geography, environmental history and political ecology with a special emphasis on the arid lands of the globe. She is a professor in the History Department and in the Geography Graduate Group and will be teaching a new course, GDB 106: Geographies of (One) Health, in Spring 2022.

Dr. Tiffany Lowe-Power is a professor of the Plant Pathology department at UC Davis. In her lab, Dr. Lowe-Power studies plant bacteriology, especially the plant pathogen Ralstonia solanacearum adapts to, survives in, and causes disease in host plants.

Dr. Joanne Emerson is a professor of the Plant Pathology department at UC Davis who teaches GDB 187 and SAS 13. In her lab, Dr. Emerson studies viral communities and their influences on host ecology and biogeochemistry in a variety of environments, including soil and plant-associated ecosystems.