Robert Lauzon, an associate professor of biology, was recently awarded a prestigious fellowship from the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), an internationally renowned biomedical and environmental research center in Woods Hole, Mass.
The Frederik B. and Betsy G. Bang Fellowship Fund provides funding for visiting investigators to study the immune capability of marine animals and the use of marine models for research in molecular biology or biomedicine.
Lauzon is studying the functional similarities between death and tissue regeneration in the Botryllus schlosseri, or sea squirt, and the role of blood phagocytes in these processes. Botryllus schlosseri is a marine invertebrate closely related to chordates (vertebrates) that live in shallow waters around the world. The collaborators on the project include Stefano Tiozzo, Ulrich Kuern and Snjezana Rendulic, postdoctoral researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Lauzon joins some of the world’s leading cell biologists, physiologists, parasitologists, microbiologists, neurobiologists, developmental biologists and ecologists who convene each summer at the MBL, the oldest private marine laboratory in the Americas.
Lauzon has been at Union since 1996. He received his Ph.D. from Queen's University in Kingston, Canada, and earned his bachelor's degree from McGill University in Montreal.