UPB Promotes Three in Biology Program

The University of Pittsburgh at Bradford has announced the promotion of three members of the biology faculty effective July 1.

Dr. Lauren Yaich, associate professor of biology, will become the new associate dean of academic affairs. Currently she is the chairwoman of the Division of Biological and Health Sciences, a position that will be taken up by Dr. Mary Mulcahy, associate professor of biology.

Included in the division are the majors of sports medicine, nursing, radiological science, athletic training and biology. Mulcahy is currently the director of the biology program and director of the Allegheny Institute of Natural History.

Mulcahy will continue to oversee the Allegheny Institute, but the new director of the biology program will be Dr. David Merwine, assistant professor of biology.

Yaich holds her doctoral degree in molecular biology from Vanderbilt University and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology at Colgate University. Before coming to Pitt-Bradford, she served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, where she conducted independent research. She has earned a number of awards, including a National Science Foundation Developmental Neurobiology Fellowship and a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

She has been the recipient of the Pitt-Bradford Chairs’ Faculty Teaching Award in 2003 and the University of Pittsburgh Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2004.

In addition to her work with college-age students, she has regularly promoted science education by establishing the Girls in Engineering, Math and Science workshop at Pitt-Bradford and teaching at Pitt-Bradford’s Science Camp for elementary- and middle-school-age children. She and her husband, Richard Barton, live in Bradford with their two children.

Mulcahy earned her doctoral degree in biological sciences from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a Bachelor of Arts from The College of Wooster.

Before coming to Pitt-Bradford, she served as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Kentucky, where her position was funded by the National Science Foundation. She also has worked with Pitt-Bradford Science Camp and lives in Bradford with her husband, Dr. Francis Mulcahy, and two children.

Merwine joined the Pitt-Bradford biology program as a full-time member of the faculty in 2007. Prior to teaching at Pitt-Bradford, he was a researcher at the University of Southern California’s Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute.

Pictured, from left, Dr. Lauren Yaich, Dr. Mary Mulcahy and Dr. David Merwine, members of the biology faculty at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford who have been promoted effective July 1.
Photo courtesy of Pitt-Bradford