Dr. Mike Lehman - The Brain’s role in Reproductive Function

Dr. Mike Lehman’s research has focused on how the brain controls fundamental aspects of reproduction, including the neural and hormonal mechanisms that regulate reproduction, stress, metabolism, and seasonal physiology. He is widely recognized for his discovery and characterization of KNDy neurons (co-expressing kisspeptin, neurokinin B, and dynorphin) in the hypothalamus and for demonstrating their central role in generating and regulating pulsatile GnRH and LH secretion—the fundamental driver of reproductive function. His work has shown how these neurons integrate steroid hormone feedback and environmental cues, including photoperiod and circadian timing signals, to coordinate reproductive hormone release. Importantly, this foundational basic research on KNDy circuitry has translated into the development of novel therapeutic approaches for a range of human reproductive disorders,. By bridging fundamental neuroendocrine mechanisms with clinical application, his research has significantly advanced both mechanistic understanding and treatment strategies in reproductive medicine.

Dr. Benjamin Duval - Climate Change Hits Belowground

Heavy traffic and smoke billowing from factories is what most people associate with carbon gases and climate change, but soils hold more carbon than all plant life on Earth.

NMT's Dr. Ben Duval is hoping to understand how plant roots and microbes in the soil help store that carbon belowground. Along with graduate students, Duval is studying what triggers native New Mexican pinon and juniper trees to make seeds in our dry ecosystems, a process that requires plants to put some of their carbon into roots.

Soil bacteria and fungi chemically change the carbon, and play an important role in keeping it in the ground. Duval is also working on a Department of Energy funded project that will measure how much carbon gets into the soil from crop roots, and if the amount of carbon that stays belowground depends on a farmer's decisions about how and when to use fertilizer and irrigation.

Dr. Paris Salazar-Hamm - The Increasing Threat of Fungal Pathogens

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has reminded the world of the fragility of human systems in the face of infectious disease. Although global pandemics often shine the spotlight on the threats posed by bacteria and viruses, fungi have caused substantial mortality in amphibians (chytridiomycosis), mammals (white-nose syndrome), and reptiles (snake fungal disease). Fungal pandemics have resulted from the introduction of non-native fungi to naive hosts or from genetic mutations or hybridization events that increase virulence or resistance to antifungal treatments.

Dr Paris Salazar Hamm has addressed this threat to global health by interrogating the likely sources of fungal pathogens capable of causing zoonotic disease in humans: the microbiomes of wild animals that are increasingly in contact with human populations. Fungal diseases kill more than 1.5 million each year and impact over a billion people globally. Her research program will combine zoonotic disease surveillance, epidemiological datasets, and pathogen genomics to elucidate evolutionary drivers of emergence and adaptation to human hosts and track transmission events over spatial and temporal scales.

Dr. Josh Jahner - Genetic Variation  in Bighorn Sheep

Josh Jahner is an evolutionary biologist with a passion for understanding the ecological factors that generate and maintain genetic variation across natural and modified landscapes. His current research asks how management strategies have affected population genetic structure and hybridization among three subspecies of bighorn sheep (California, Desert, Rocky Mt.) found throughout western North America (largely funded by the Nevada Department of Wildlife). In addition, He is actively working with a number of other study systems, including Colias butterflies, American woodcock, and Great Basin plants.

 

Dr. Tom Kieft - Dark life in deep, ancient groundwater

Tom Kieft is an environmental microbiologist who has studied microbial communities in a variety of unusual environments, including thermal springs, desert soils, caves, and deep aquifers. For several years he has been traveling to South Africa to study microbes in deep fractured rock accessed via gold mines that penetrate the Earth to 3 km and more. The mine companies  drill into surrounding rock, intercepting fracture water that harbors a diversity of microbes. Rock-water interactions in these deep aquifers generate hydrogen (H₂) that fuels subsurface lithoautotrophic microbial ecosystems (SLiMEs) that function entirely independently from photosynthesis and the surface world. As such, they serve as terrestrial analogs for possible life in the subsurface of other planets, e.g. Mars, where the surface is inhospitable, but the subsurface might be habitable. Recently, Kieft along with colleagues and students, have been studying a deep (3.1 km), nearly saturated (24% Na/Ca-Cl), ancient (1.2 km mean residence time since exposure to the atmosphere) brine discovered in Moab-Khotsong mine. Kieft is conducting a new NSF-funded project to drill a new borehole into this brine and to test the hypothesis that earthquakes stimulate microbial activity.