Dr. Penelope Morrison
[email protected] | 724-334-6719 | 111B Administration Building, Penn State New Kensington
Dr. Penelope Morrison is an Associate Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State New Kensington. She also serves as the program coordinator for the undergraduate Biobehavioral Health degree and as a University College Senior Faculty Mentor. Dr. Morrison has served as a co-facilitator for the Men Embracing Non-Violence and Safety program through the Women’s Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh and as a research consultant on the National Battering Intervention Services Network. She currently serves as an executive board member for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Dr. Morrison earned her PhD in medical anthropology and master’s in public health from the University of Pittsburgh. She also has extensive training in health services research, having completed a three-year postdoctoral fellowship with the RAND/University of Pittsburgh Health Institute. In her spare time, Dr. Morrison is a volunteer lighthouse keeper, an avid baker, and an amateur naturalist.
Dr. Morrison’s early research was focused on understanding adolescent sexual and reproductive health risk taking among underserved, unhoused populations of youth in the both the United States and Brazil. Her more recent work seeks to understand what strategies work best for reducing abusive behaviors among individuals with a known history of partner violence. She has published extensively on the experiences of facilitators, clients, and others involved in battering intervention services, with an eye toward uncovering best practices for reducing the incidence of abuse, and on the risk factors associated with engaging in partner violent behaviors. She has also recently expanded her work to include an understanding of co-occurring IPV and opioid use disorders among victims, and the potential utility of engaging in a medical-legal partnership model of care for this population as a way to reduce stigma and other barriers to care. In addition to her own work, Dr. Morrison has served as a co-investigator and qualitative and ethnographic methodological expert on a wide variety of projects addressing health inequities for young women and girls.
Dr. Alina Bodea Crisan
[email protected] | 724-334-6748 | 110A Administration Building, Penn State New Kensington
Dr. Alina Bodea has extensive experience in healthcare and health promotion practice and research. She earned her Medical Doctor degree at from University of Medicine “Carol Davila” in Bucharest, Romania, and her Doctorate in Public Health from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Bodea worked in Romania in the areas of primary health care, child and family services, and community development. She continued working with families and communities in the Pittsburgh area, joining research activities in Family Support and Early Head Start programs. As a practitioner, her career encompasses all the aspects of healthcare, from direct clinical care, to health promotion programming, advocacy and policy development. As a researcher, she is particularly interested in explanatory and ideological frameworks in health promotion, and in the relationship between human rights and systems of health. Her teaching portfolio includes undergraduate and graduate courses in a variety of public health subjects, such as health promotion, health communication, global health, and project programming and evaluation. Dr. Bodea considers academic learning to be one of the most enriching forms of experience in the lives of individuals and societies. At the same time, she celebrates all lived experience of people as the source of our communal shaping of an open ended future in search of human flourishing. In the classroom, Dr. Bodea cultivates a respectful attitude, academic rigor, and reflexive inquiry.
Dr. Kristal Tucker
[email protected] | 412-675-9033 | 305 Ostermayer Laboratory, Penn State Greater Allegheny
Dr. Kristal Tucker earned a bachelor’s degree in Biology from the University of Tennessee in 1994. In 2010 she received a Ph.D in Neuroscience from Florida State University, where her research focused on the effects of diet-induced obesity on the neurobiology of the brain. During the time between her undergraduate and graduate degrees, Dr. Tucker worked as a research scientist at Auburn University, Florida State University, and the pharmaceutical Schering-Plough, studying ion channels, the proteins responsible for the electrical signals in the brain and heart. Before joining the faculty at Penn State Greater Allegheny, she was a Research Instructor at the University of Pittsburgh, investigating the electrical and metabolic properties of the neurons that die during Parkinson’s disease, the dopamine neurons of the substantia nigra. Now that she is here at Penn State Greater Allegheny, she is excited be part of the Biolbehavioral Health program helping undergraduates reach their career goals. As well as teaching biology and neurobiology courses, she is thrilled to open her new lab to undergraduate research in neurobiology. She and her students will use primary cultures of dopamine neurons from the substantia nigra, an area of the brain sensitive to metabolic stress, and dopamine neurons of the olfactory bulb, a brain area that is not sensitive to metabolic stress, to compare the physiological parameters that are responsible for this difference in sensitivity. This work, beyond the contribution to Parkinson’s research, provides our Biobehavioral Health students with laboratory experience, opportunities for publication and presentation at meetings, and research skills necessary for entering today’s job market.
Dr. John Peles
[email protected] | 412-675-9484 | 209 Ostermayer Lab Building, Penn State Greater Allegheny
Dr. John Peles is Professor of Biology and Coordinator of the Biobehavioral Health Degree program at Penn State Greater Allegheny. A native of western Pennsylvania, Dr. Peles earned an undergraduate degree in Environmental Health and an MS in Biology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He completed his PhD in Zoology at Miami University and was a postdoctoral associate with the University of Georgia at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. His research interests include the influence of toxicant exposure on physiological parameters in aquatic organisms, the use of biochemical markers as indicators of contaminant exposure, and the study of uptake and distribution of environmental contaminants in natural systems. Dr. Peles has published more than 40 papers in peer-reviewed journals. He also has published numerous book chapters and has co-edited two books. In 17 years at Penn State, Dr. Peles has taught 12 different courses covering a wide variety of subjects including introductory biology, cell and molecular biology, genetics, physiology, ecology, biostatistics, biochemistry, and behavioral genetics.