A Message From the Chair

Thank you for your interest in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Houston. We strive to be at the leading edge of scientific research and education, and to continue to be a flagship department in our university. We strive to be a place where creative and industrious faculty and students can do their best possible work, and where our graduates at all levels are fully prepared for the next phases of their lives. We are dedicated to excellence in the education of the next generation of scientists, and to enhancing the scientific literacy of the general public.

The faculty in our department attract more than $8 million in external grant annually, primarily from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, but also from other federal agencies and private foundations. Research reports orginating in the department appear in the most prestigious scientific journals, including Nature, Science and Cell, and our faculty serve on numerous national and international advisory panels and editorial boards. Our faculty have also won numerous college and university teaching excellence awards.

The research interests of the department are very broad, ranging from ecosystems and evolutionary biology, to the cell analysis of brain function, to the fine details of macromolecular structure. However, you will see that we have areas of special strength, and we hope to build on these strengths in the future. Many of our faculty are young, and are just entering into the most productive phase of their scientific careers, and I believe that the best is yet to come for this department. We anticipate recruiting several additional faculty members into all three divisions of the department over the next few years, and ground has recently been broken on state of the art research and classroom buildings that will house several members of our faculty. Other new initiatives will enhance the instrumentation infrastructure of the department, and make this an even better place to work. We currently offer undergraduate and graduate degrees in both Biology and in Biochemistry. We support more than 115 graduate students from all over the world, many postdoctoral fellows, and we are the home department for more than 1,800 undergraduate majors in Biology or in Biochemistry.

Whether you are looking to learn more about us as a prospective faculty, postdoctoral fellow, student, or donor, I hope you find the information on this site to be useful and readily accessible. If you are interested in the work carried out by individual faculty, please feel free to contact us for additional information.

Stuart E. Dryer, Ph.D.
John and Rebecca Moores Professor and Chair