GCC Welcomes Three New Faculty Affiliates

Dr. Esra Buyuktahtakin Toy

Industrial and Systems Engineering

Dr. Büyüktahtakιn Toy is a national leader in epidemic disease modeling and logistics optimization to tackle epidemic diseases in healthcare, agriculture, and forestry. Examples of applications include infectious diseases that ravage the human body, such as COVID-19, Ebola virus disease (EVD), and HIV, and invasive species that create havoc on forests, such as the emerald ash borer (EAB) in North America and Canada, Sericea Lespedeza damaging agricultural products in the Great Plains, Zebra Mussels harming native species in Great Lakes, and flammable buffelgrass in the Sonoran Desert.

Dr. Courtney Leisner

Plant and Environmental Sciences

Dr. Courtney Leisner’s research investigates how climate change effects crop physiology and development and the subsequent effects on nutritional quality and yield. Her research integrates fundamental crop plant physiology with genomics and molecular biology at the whole-plant level to assess how plants develop innate resilience mechanisms that can be tapped for production of sustainable future food. Current research projects span many fruit and vegetable cropping systems, and use interdisciplinary approaches to understand the complex response of plants to climate change.

Dr. Jen Moss

Biological Sciences

Dr. Jen Moss is a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary biologist. Research in her lab focuses on reproductive behaviors such as mating and parental care, and how these processes can inform demographic and evolutionary responses to climate change. To address these questions, she draws from a combination of laboratory and field approaches working primarily with local amphibians and reptiles.