Welcome to The Department of Biological Sciences!

The department consists of a lot of people: faculty, administrative staff, technical staff, and graduate research/teaching assistants. One strong thing bonding us together is that we are working hard at things we really like, advanced biological education and research.

There is a lot to see on this website, so look around. You can get a very good overview of our research endeavors by visiting the web pages of the individual faculty members and their research labs. If you are a current or prospective undergraduate student, you will find detailed descriptions of our various majors, information about our courses and undergraduate research, and links to interdisciplinary opportunities. If you are looking around for opportunities at the graduate level, peruse the pages describing our doctoral programs in molecular cell biology, biochemistry, and integrative biology and neuroscience, or our highly focused master's program in molecular biology that is exclusively by distance.

If you have questions about any aspects of our department, feel free to e-mail any faculty member or post-doctoral scientist, or any member of our administrative or technical staff. Anyone will be glad to answer your questions or put you in touch with someone who can.

Matthew Close Ph.D. Candidate

Matthew Close is a Ph.D. candidate in the Integrative Biology program in the lab of Professor David Cundall. Research in the Cundall lab ranges from studies in evolutionary and functional morphology to ecology. Most of the work currently carried out in the lab centers around the form, function and evolution of the feeding apparatus in snakes. Matt’s work focuses on the behavior of the snake lower jaw apparatus and the structural basis of its ability to undergo high degrees of extension. 

In snakes, the tips of the mandibles do not form a rigid symphysis typical of many other terrestrial vertebrates, and many snakes are thus able to ingest whole prey of relatively large size. Through analysis of swallowing events, Matt is determining the effects of prey size and shape on the lateral migration of the seemingly free mandible tips. He is also currently working with Joe Constantino, an undergraduate in the Department of Biological Sciences, and Richard Vinci, a faculty member in Materials Science and Engineering at Lehigh, to determine the mechanical behavior of the lower jaw when it is stretched. Through mechanical manipulations and both gross anatomical and histological analyses of stretched and unstretched specimens, Matt is examining the relative roles of the arrangement and composition of the lower jaw soft tissues to the extensibility of the lower jaw as a whole. Finally, he is determining whether there are differences in intermandibular extensibility between major snake families and between different age/size classes, and whether these functional differences are related to differences in soft tissue structure.  Some pieces of this work have been presented in talks given at national meetings of professional societies.

In addition to his research in the Cundall lab, Matt has spent his graduate career developing the tools he needs to be an effective teacher in the university setting.  The department has provided the opportunity for him to serve as a teaching assistant for introductory biology courses such as Introduction to Cellular and Molecular Biology Laboratory, Genetics Laboratory, Integrative and Comparative Biology, and Biology for Non-Majors and has spent three fall semesters with juniors and seniors as the sole TA of the Comparative Anatomy Laboratory course.  He has also previously been the recipient of the Teaching Assistant of the Year award from the College of Arts and Sciences, a student-nominated award given yearly to one graduate student in the college.
             
       

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Department of Biological Sciences
Lehigh University
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