2023 Stupka Symposium

Joe Jez is the Chair of Biology, Spencer T. Olin Professor, and a HHMI Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Joe was an undergrad at Penn State (1992), received his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania (1998), and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute (1998- 2001). After working at Kosan Biosciences (2001-2), he started his group at the Danforth Plant Science Center (2002), and then moved to Washington University (2008)…

Peter McKinnon, PhD, is the Director of the Center for Pediatric Neurological Disease Research within the St Jude Pediatric Translational Neuroscience Initiative. He is also Vice-Chair of the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology. He received his PhD from Australia where he worked on chromatin structure in the childhood neurodegenerative syndrome, ataxia telangiectasia (A-T), subsequently developing an interest in the neurobiology of A-T…

Natalie Whitis, is from Oskaloosa, Iowa and graduated from Iowa State with a degree in biophysics in 2017. During her time at Iowa State she studied type II CRISPR systems in Dr. Dipali Sashital’s lab, using site-directed mutagenesis to better understand how this bacterial immune system fights pathogens like bacteriophages. After graduating from Iowa State, she began her graduate work at the University of California, San Francisco in the Tetrad program…

Kevin is a Junior majoring in Biochemistry and minoring Mathematics. He is currently the Treasurer of Stupka Committee, Treasurer of BBMB club, and a peer mentor of the BBMB learning committee. He works as an undergrad research assistant to Dr. Marjory Rover in the Bioeconomy Institute where they seek to develop a fuel additive that is 100% biorenewable by employing the Folin-Ciocalteu method to esterify phenolic bio-oil from plants. After graduation, he is planning on going to medical school, specializing in pediatrics.

Michelle is a junior majoring in biochemistry with a minor in biology. She is currently the publicity chair for the Stupka Committee and a peer mentor for the BBMB Learning Community. Michelle has been working in Dr. Reuben Peters’ lab since 2020. Currently, she is studying the combinatorial biosynthesis of diterpenoid natural products. After graduating from Iowa State, Michelle plans to attend medical school or possibly an MD-PhD program.