Voices of Excellence

Associate professor of molecular genetics and 2026 Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching recipient Guramrit Singh researches RNA, temporary copies of DNA used to make proteins. His lab studies mRNA quality control/surveillance that destroys faulty messages, noting links to neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and to cancer strategies. He also describes how he got into the field and what is next for his research, including differentiating  stem cells into different lineages to measure the presence and impact of specific proteins in surveillance pathways. Guramrit SinghDownload

Jeanne Serb, professor and chair of the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology, grew up fascinated by animals. She turned that interest into a successful career researching how organisms sense environmental cues and how sensory systems evolve. She describes to host David Staley how eyes evolved independently across animals, and outlines her research on marine bivalves (scallops, oysters, mussels), showing five independent origins of eyes. If you didn’t know that scallops and jellyfish have eyes, this is the podcast for you!

Shuai Huang, assistant professor of molecular genetics and NSF CAREER awardee, researches how plants defend themselves. Although plants lack specialized immune cells, each cell has immune receptors and can mount responses against bacteria, fungi, oomycetes, viruses, and other pathogens. Huang’s lab identifies genes, pathways, and signaling molecules involved in plant defense and discovered that many cellular molecules rapidly cluster into membrane-free “biomolecular condensates” via liquid-liquid phase separation, assembling quickly under stress and disassembling when the job is done. Huang aims to engineer condensates to improve resistance without reducing growth and to study roles in mechanical and abiotic stress responses relevant to climate change and food security. Voices Shuai HuangDownload

Kristen Lindquist, professor of psychology, shares her research with host David Staley. Lindquist researches what emotions are and how the brain creates them. She challenges the common view that emotions are triggered, instinctive packages generated by dedicated brain centers like the amygdala. Lindquist summarizes neuroimaging evidence that the amygdala is neither consistent nor specific to fear and that emotions involve whole-brain patterns including regions linked to language, memory, and abstract knowledge. She argues emotions are constructed through predictive processes shaped by personal experience, social learning, and cultural narratives, with implications for treatment. Lindquist closes by describing lifespan research using daily-life sampling, physiology, brain scans, and planned longitudinal follow-up. Voices LindquistDownload

Charles O. Anderson, OSU’s fourth artist laureate, professor of dance, and founder of the Afro contemporary Charles O. Anderson Dance Theater X, discusses being a “kinetic storyteller.” Anderson prefers this term because it understands movement as knowledge production, memory transmission, and meaning-making shaped. His choreography is influenced by Black church and club cultures and emphasizes how bodies carry histories somatically through gesture, rhythm, and proximity. Anderson’s choreography embodies behavior from sources like tension, social anxiety, and everyday observations . and defines “Afro contemporary” as embracing experimental identity beyond “traditional African dance.” Anderson describes Recurrent Unrest, developed amid early Black Lives Matter influences and set to Steve Reich, as a cumulative, polyrhythmic exploration of civil unrest that also included a reparations initiative to bring impacted communities into concert dance; it became a film during the pandemic. He outlines his laureate project Croatoa: Re-Singing America’s Next 250 Years, with statewide community testimony, “wailing wall” artifacts, and inclusive performance, and shares his late start in dance, career path, and current work Re-Singing From the Underspace with Dayton Contemporary Dance Company. VoE Charles O AndersonDownload