A Warm Welcome to Three Bright Additions to the Department
Science Never Stops Progressing, Neither do We
The Georgetown Biology Department would like to welcome three new professors: Kathleen Macguire-Zeiss, Mark Rose, and Timothy Newfield! Each with their own respective fields of expertise, the three new professors are dedicated to providing a formative education to their students. The different scientific backgrounds of each new professor accumulate to a holistic approach to teaching and improving our biology department. From Parkinson’s disease to cell fusion, meiosis, and climate change, the work of each new professor adds a great contribution to biological studies at Georgetown.
Kathleen Macguire-Zeiss received her B.S. degree from Albright College and went on to receive her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. She is currently interested in researching the mechanisms involved in age-related progressive neurodegenerative diseases, more specifically, why the nigrostriatal pathway degenerates in Parkinson’s disease. She is hopeful of developing novel therapies for PD.
Mark Rose received his B.S. degree in Genetics from Cornell University and Ph.D. in Biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then did post-doctoral research at the Whitehead Institute at MIT. Prior to coming to Georgetown, he was a Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. His research centers on the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as it is an ideal organism for the combined genetic and biochemical analysis of fundamental cell processes universal to eukaryotic cells. The goals of his research are to understand the mechanisms of cell fusion and the regulation of meiosis.
Timothy Newfield is a historical epidemiologist and environmental historian. After defending his doctoral thesis at McGill University in 2011, he held research fellowships at the universities of Michigan, Stirling, and Princeton. He has taught environmental and medical history, and most recently led a seminar on the global history of yersinia pestis (from ca.3000BCE to last year). Tim joined Georgetown University as an Assistant Professor in History and Biology in the Spring of 2017. His recent work has focused on the divergence of the morbilliviruses rinderpest and measles in the Common Era and on the prevalence of vivax and malariae malaria in the early post-classical period. Forthcoming work looks at the history of short-term/rapid climate change and food shortage in the late first millennium CE and the 376-386CE bovine panzootic, an allegedly intercontinental cattle plague that seems not to have occurred. He completed a state-of-the-art synthesis of the historical and palaeoclimatic scholarship on the 535-550CE global climatic downturn for the forthcoming Palgrave Handbook of Climate History a short while ago.
As the new professors begin to make their mark here at Georgetown, the Biology Department wants to provide a warm welcome and the support necessary to hit the ground running. Not only will these professors be making significant contributions in transferring science into the classroom, they each have a fundamental drive to take their research focus to the next level. The limitless, ever-expanding nature of science allows for growth and development in many different respects. Professor Macguire –Zeiss, Professor Rose, and Professor Newfield are helping Georgetown to take another step into exploring biology.