معرفی
Deborah Eastman serves as Associate Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Biology at Connecticut College, where she has been a faculty member since 2003. She holds administrative responsibilities including supporting department chairs in faculty hiring, overseeing sabbatical eligibility tracking, and managing faculty development funds such as the R.F. Johnson Faculty Development Fund and Susan Eckert Lynch ’62 Faculty Research Fund.
Her research focuses on cellular communication during embryonic development, utilizing cellular, computational, genetic, and molecular approaches to study signaling pathways and transcriptional regulation. Eastman began her work with myxobacteria fruiting body formation, progressed to Notch signaling pathway research in Drosophila melanogaster at Yale and Greece, and recently shifted focus to taste bud development in axolotls (Ambystoma mexicanum) using RNAseq genome-wide analysis. Her work bridges fundamental developmental mechanisms with human disease applications including cancer, stroke, dementia, and neurodegenerative disorders.
- Education: B.A. from Grinnell College, Ph.D. from University of Minnesota, Post-doctoral fellowships at Institute of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry (Greece) and Yale University
- Teaching: Courses in Developmental Biology, Genetics, and Cell Signaling with emphasis on equitable pedagogy and undergraduate research mentorship
Eastman actively contributes to institutional diversity initiatives as a former co-coordinator for Full Participation and Divisional Fellow in the Center for the Critical Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), where she co-developed the Social Difference and Power curricular requirement and organized SYZYGY programming examining race/ethnicity in STEM contexts.
Her laboratory work demonstrates a clear evolutionary trajectory from bacterial systems to insect models and now vertebrate regeneration research, with consistent focus on how cellular signaling dictates cell specialization. Current research employs bioinformatic, genetic, and molecular approaches to identify co-regulators of Notch target genes during sensory organ development.
