Kristine L. Willett, Ph.D., is chair of the Department of BioMolecular Sciences in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Mississippi. A professor of pharmacology and environmental toxicology, she has taught at the university for the past 17 years, including both graduate and undergraduate courses in toxicology and environmental toxicology, and also teaches classes in the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College. During her time at UM, she has mentored eight master’s-level, nine doctoral-level, and 36 high school and undergraduate students in her laboratory. She also serves as the environmental toxicology graduate program coordinator.
Willett’s research has been funded over the years by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Army Corps of Engineers. Her lab studies the developmental, reproductive, and multigenerational impacts of benzo[a]pyrene exposure using fish models. She also studies nanosilver mechanisms of toxicity and the consequences of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on oysters. Throughout her career, she has led research projects that were designed to fundamentally understand the molecular mechanisms underlying toxicity and/or shed light on the potential adverse outcomes due to relevant anthropogenic contamination. New work in her lab uses zebrafish to investigate drug-resistant epilepsy, including the efficacy versus toxicity of cannabidiol and +9-tetrahydrocannabinol. Willett is active in both the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, where she is a member of the board of directors, as well as the Society of Toxicology, where she is the past president of the Molecular and Systems Biology Specialty section and past chair of the Undergraduate Education subcommittee. She is also an associate editor of Toxicological Sciences.
Willett earned her bachelor’s in chemistry at the University of North Carolina and a Ph.D. in toxicology from Texas A&M University. She was a Dreyfus postdoctoral fellow in environmental chemistry at Indiana University and then an RJR Leon Golberg postdoctoral fellow in toxicology at Duke University.
Joshua Mann, M.D., completed his undergraduate degree at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, before earning his medical degree from the University of Mississippi School of Medicine in 1996. He completed his residency training in public health and general preventive medicine and a Master of Public Health degree at the University of South Carolina in 1999. He was a faculty member at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine from 2002 until 2015, serving as medical director of student and employee health and preventive medicine residency director. In 2015, he joined the University of Mississippi Medical Center as chair of the new Department of Preventive Medicine. Mann is an active researcher, having authored or co-authored 75 scientific articles focusing on a range of topics including the health of people with disabilities, prenatal risk factors for childhood disabilities, and associations of religious/spiritual factors and social support with antenatal and postpartum anxiety and depression.
Seena L. Haines, Pharm.D., is professor and chair of the Department of Pharmacy Practice at the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy. Prior to her position at UM, she served as professor and senior associate dean for faculty at Palm Beach Atlantic University’s Gregory School of Pharmacy. She served for seven years as director of pharmacy services at four community health centers and was co-director of the Diabetes Education and Research Center with the Florida Atlantic University School of Nursing. Haines served as residency director for the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists-accredited pharmacy practice residency emphasizing ambulatory care and academia at the Gregory School of Pharmacy for seven years.
Gregg Roman, Ph.D., is a professor and chair of the Department of Biology at the University of Mississippi. He has an M.S. in genetics from the University of New Hampshire and a Ph.D. in cell and molecular biology from the University of Pennsylvania. Roman was a faculty member at Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Houston before joining the University of Mississippi in 2016. His laboratory at UM is investigating the cellular and molecular mechanisms of behavioral plasticity, including how the brain adapts to high levels of alcohol. Intoxicating levels of alcohol leads to tolerance within the brain, which is a critical step toward developing an addiction to this drug. Roman is investigating this process utilizing genetic, physiological, and behavioral approaches with the model system Drosophila melanogaster. He has won several awards for his research, including the Dean Scholar Award from the University of Pennsylvania, the Phillip O’Bryan Montgomery Fellowship from the Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Cancer Research Fund, the Henry and William Test Investigator of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, and the Distinguished Scholar and Lifetime Member Award of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars.
Meagen Rosenthal, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of pharmacy administration in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Mississippi. Rosenthal’s research focuses on developing systems to integrate health research evidence into practice (either in clinical settings or the daily lives of people) faster and more effectively. She approaches this broad topic area through two specific areas. The first specific area involves partnering with people who have chronic conditions such as diabetes and obesity to understand their specific needs and help to generate research questions that are meaningful to them. The goal of this approach is that by generating knowledge from research questions that are important to people living with these conditions, these people will be more likely to adopt and integrate that knowledge into their daily lives. The second specific area involves working with community pharmacists to transform their practices to provide patients, especially those in rural communities where resources are limited, with much-needed services focused on chronic disease management. Community pharmacists are integral health care team members who are more accessible to patients than most other health care providers; however, they remain an underutilized resource.