Cheryl Van Buskirk
Professor

Brief Biography

I grew up in Calgary, Canada and received my Bachelor's degree in Biochemistry from the University of Calgary in 1993. I fell in love with genetics thanks to a great teacher, and I've been doing genetics ever since. I went to Princeton to study developmental genetics in Drosophila under Trudi Schupbach, then to Caltech to study behavioral genetics in C. elegans under Paul Sternberg. Here at CSUN I aim to pay forward the inspiration given to me by my professors and mentors along the way. I regularly teach non-majors biology (BIOL100), where I strive to make the information as accessible and entertaining as possible, even if that means being silly. Each fall I teach an upper-division lab course (BIOL447/L) that is also known as FIRE! (Full Immersion Research Experience) - a crash course in becoming a scientist. I also teach BIOL360 Genetics as well as graduate seminars. In my research lab we are trying to find out why, at a cellular level, we need to sleep. Sleep appears to have arisen long ago in animal evolution, so we can use a simple model organism (C. elegans, a microscopic worm) to probe sleep function in a relevant way. If you are an undergraduate student looking for an inclusive, authentic research experience, check out FIRE lab and/or reach out to me, and if you are thinking of the master's degree program in biology, shoot me an email and come check out our research lab!

Research 

Research Interest data is currently not available.

Connections