Mount Holyoke professors have won Guggenheim awards, NASA grants and Carnegie Fellowships.
They receive millions in funding from national foundations, leading to unique research opportunities for students.
They’re intense, passionate, innovative, determined and demanding. Explore their accomplishments here, read recent faculty news articles or search the faculty directory.
Dr. Brennan was invited to participate in a conference organized by the National Academy of Sciences on “Re-envisioning the Future of STEM Research at Emerging Research Institutions: A Summit”. She delivered her remarks as part of a panel on strategies that have helped to run a successful undergraduate research program at en ERI.
Dr. Brennan was invited to give a Keynote address at on July 15th 2026 at the Animal Behavior Society Conference in Cincinnati entitled “Studying Sex: The Questions we ask and don't ask”. Dr. Brennan also gave a plenary talk at the American Ornithological Society meeting on August 7th 2026 at Amherst entitled: “Science lessons from the sex life of birds”.
Professor Brennan's work is featured in the documentary Second Nature, which had its premiere in NYC in October 13, 2025, and has continued to have screenings around the world.
Brodie, R., Chery, M., Habiba, U., Pradhan, A., 2023. Rising surface temperatures lead to more frequent and longer burrow retreats in males of the fiddler crab, Minuca pugnax. JOURNAL OF THERMAL BIOLOGY 116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtherbio.2023.103639
Brodie R., *B. Roberts , *J. Espinosa, *K. Heilman , S. Borgianini, J. Welch , K. Reinsel. 2017. Seasonal and latitudinal variations in the energy reserves of the mud fiddler crab Uca pugnax: implications for the response to climate change. Aquatic Biology 26:113-123.
*indicates undergraduate coauthor
Alyxander Burns’ paper “Who Do We Mean When We Talk About Visualization Novices?” was awarded the Best Paper Award at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the premier international conference of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This award is given to the top 1% of submissions to the conference.
Massoni, S. C., Evans, N. J., Hantke, I., Fenton, C., Torpey, J. H., Collins, K. M., Krysztofinska, E. M., Muench, J. H., Thapaliya, A., Martínez-Lumbreras, S., Hart Ferrell, S., Slater, C., Wang, X., Fekade, R., Obwar, S., Yin, S., Vazquez, A., Prior, C. B., Turgay, K., Isaacson, R. L., and Camp, A. H. (2025). MdfA is a novel ClpC adaptor protein that functions in the developing Bacillus subtilis spore. Genes & Development https://doi.org/10.1101/gad.352498.124
Riley, E. P., Lyda, J. A., Reyes-Matte, O., Sugie, J., Kasu, I. R., Enustun, E., Armbruster, E. G., Ravishankar, S., Isaacson, R. L., Camp, A. H., Lopez-Garrido, J., & Pogliano, K. (2025). Developmentally regulated proteolysis by MdfA and ClpCP mediates metabolic differentiation during Bacillus subtilis sporulation. Genes & Development https://doi.org/10.1101/gad.352535.124
Lee, S. M., Tsou, J. J.-Y., Evans, M., Danese, C., Xu, Y., Mim, M., Chen, W. (2025). Elucidating and mitigating instabilities of poly(vinyl alcohol) thin films in aqueous environments. Langmuir, 41, 28119–28128. DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.5c04084
Ciufo, T. (2025). Listening Through Acoustic Ecology and Sound Art. Presented at Ways of Listening: Species, Gender, Abilities and Cultures, 12th International FKL Symposium on Soundscape, Italy (2025)
