Jay Stafstrom, Ph.D.

In 2019, I retired from the Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Illinois University after teaching there for 29 years. Prior to that, I had received my bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College, my PhD from the University of Colorado Boulder and I had conducted postdoctoral work at Yale. My research was focused on understanding how specific genes and their products influence growth and development in plants; the main focus of my lab was a GTP-binding protein called DRG. My research organisms included pea, Arabidopsis and the moss Physcomitrella.

I have been teaching at Gonzaga part-time since 2020, mainly the 105L phage lab. Fall 2023 will be my first time teaching the Information Flow in Biological Systems lecture course (Biology 105). I very much enjoyed teaching a similar course at NIU for many years. Consequently, I'm looking forward to once again sharing my excitement for topics that I love.