The COS Speaker's Bureau is comprised of COS faculty who are willing to provide a brief informative talk to a general audience about a specific science topic.

The goal of the COS Speaker's Bureau is to help facilitate connections with friends in the community while also providing opportunities to inform the public about important scientific topics.

If you are interested in having a faculty member speak on one of the listed topics, please email sciences@utsa.edu for more information and scheduling.

Organized by department, faculty and their topics are listed below.

Faculty Topics
Audrey Lamb, Ph.D.
  • Vitamins and Minerals: How an Organism Makes or Acquires Them
Aimin Liu, Ph.D.
  • Chemistry of Amino Acids in Biological Context
  • Metalloenzyme-Mediated Oxidation Reactions
Syed Muhammad Usama, Ph.D.
  • Use of Flouorescent Imaging in Cancer

Faculty Topics
 

Faculty Topics
Matt Cannon, Ph.D.
  • Dating of Rocks
  • Earthquakes
  • Meteorites
  • Rocks in General
Saugata Datta, Ph.D.
  • Environment and Pollution
  • Water and Human Health
Alberto Mestas-Nuñez, Ph.D.
  • Atmospheric Sciences
  • Climate Change
  • Ocean Sciences
Janet Vote, M.S.
  • Fossil Record and Geologic Time
  • Past Environments
Alan Whittington, Ph.D.
  • Natural Disasters
  • Planetary Sciences
  • Volcanoes
Hongjie Xie, Ph.D.
  • Climate Change
  • Glaciation History of North America and Beyond

Faculty Topics
Jessica Beckham, Ph.D.
  • Insect Decline
  • Insect Importance
  • Native Texas Bees
  • Texas Bumble Bees
Janis Bush, Ph.D.
  • Historical Changes in South Texas Vegetation
  • Mentoring of STEM Students
  • Monarch Butterflies and Milkweed
Jurgen Engelberth, Ph.D.
  • Plant Communication
Jeffery Hutchinson, Ph.D.
  • Aquatic Plants
  • Edward's Aquifer
  • Freshwater Ecology
  • Wild Rice
Brian Laub, Ph.D.
  • River Restoration
  • Watershed Processes
Ferhat Ozturk, Ph.D.
  • Honeybees
  • Medicinal Honey
Steven Quezada
  • Medicinal Cannabnoids / Texas Law
Eugene Sprague, Ph.D.
  • Cardiology / Human Health
Robert Thompson, J.D.
  • Environmental Law

Faculty Topics
Erika Camacho, Ph.D.
  • Decoding Vision Loss: The Math Behind Healthy Eyes and Metabolic Pathways

Faculty Topics
Astrid Cardona, Ph.D.
  • How the Immune System Can Heal or Harm: Understanding Neuroinflammation
Thomas Forsthuber, M.D., Ph.D.
  • Autoimmune Myocarditis
  • Autoimmunity
  • Multiple Sclerosis
Chiung-Yu Hung, Ph.D.
  • Fungi are Going Viral: Can We Develop Vaccines to Manage Fungal Infections?
Karl Klose, Ph.D.
  • Bacterial Pathogenesis
  • Cholera Expert
  • Tularemia
José Lopez-Ribot, Pharm.D, Ph.D.
  • Fungi Are Everywhere: Why the Rise of Fungal Infections
Jesús Romo, Ph.D.
  • Fungi and their Frenemies: How Interactions between Fungi and Bacteria Impact Disease Outcomes
Janakiram Seshu, Ph.D.
  • Bacterial Pathogenesis
  • Vector Borne Diseases
Luan Vu, Ph.D.
  • How Early Respiratory Infections Shape Infant Health: What Every Child Caregiver Should Know
Yufeng Wang, Ph.D.
  • Bioinformatics

Faculty Topics
Alfonso Apicella, Ph.D.
  • The Brain in Action
  • The Future of Brain Disease
Erika Tatiana Camacho, Ph.D.
  • Energy Metabolism and Vision Loss: Implications of Eye Diseases and Aging Eyes
  • From Cellular Dynamics to Public Health: The Role of Energy Distribution in Vision Degeneration
  • A Race Towards Alternative Energy: Maintaining Vision in Aging and Diseased Eyes
  • Vision Decline: A Race to Harness Alternative Energy
Melanie Carless, Ph.D.
  • Epigenetic Editing – How Can We Use It?
  • Epigenetics in Alzheimer’s Disease
  • Identifying Risk Genes through Epigenetic Studies of Obesity
Brian Hermann, Ph.D.
  • Gene Editing (CRISPR/Cas9)
  • In Vitro Gametogenesis (making sperm and eggs in a dish)
  • Reproductive Biology, Contraception, Infertility
Jenny Hsieh, Ph.D.
  • Covid-19 and Brain Development
  • Is Alzheimer's a Developmental Disorder?
  • Neurogenesis: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
  • You Have Brains in Your Head, You Have Organoids in Your Dish, You Can Steer Yourself in Any Direction You Wish
David Jaffe, Ph.D.
  • Epilepsy
  • The Neural Basis for Some Interesting Animal Behaviors (e.g. bat echolocation, Pavlovian conditioning, cricket mating calls)
  • Pain
Chin-Hsing Annie Lin, Ph.D.
  • Non-Invasive Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment
Lindsey Macpherson, Ph.D.
  • Gut-Brain Signaling
  • Taste, Smell, Flavor, and Chemesthesis (e.g. spicy)
  • Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ) Disorders and Pain
George Perry, Ph.D.
  • Alzheimer's Dsease
Fidel Santamaria, Ph.D.
  • Computational Neuroscience, Learning and Memory
  • Modeling of Cerebellar Function, Modeling Power-Law Behavior from Molecule to Behavior
Alexey Soshnev, M.D., Ph.D.
  • Genetics of Malignancy and Why to Cure Cancer is a Lot Harder than to Land on the Moon
  • How Genes are Packaged and Organized and Why It Matters
Francesco Savelli, Ph.D.
  • How the Brain Makes Maps
Nicole Wicha, Ph.D.
  • Myths and Mysteries About the Bilingual Brain

Faculty Topics
Chris Packham, Ph.D.
  • Black Holes
  • Habitable World's Observatory
  • James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
  • NASA's Next Generation Observatory
Arturo Ponce-Pedraza, Ph.D.
  • Atomic Resolution
  • Crystallography
  • Electron Microscopy
  • Materials Science
Eric Schlegel, Ph.D.
  • Interacting Binary Stars
  • Nearby Galaxies
  • Stellar Astrophysics
  • Supernovae
  • X-ray or UV Astronomy
Angela Speck, Ph.D.
  • Anything Astronomy/Space Related
  • Women in Science
Xinting Yu, Ph.D.
  • Asteroid Mining
  • Exoplanets
  • Planetary Materials
  • Titan