Christina Grozinger is a former Beckman Fellow who is now an Assistant Professor of Entomology at North Carolina State.

Christina Grozinger was well on her way to earning a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard when she began searching for her research muse. She found it on the plains of east central Illinois in the form of a very important insect.

"I enjoyed what I did but I wasn't particularly inspired by it," Grozinger said. "My brother started keeping honeybees as a hobby, and he would tell me fascinating stories about their behavior, (such as) in the fall, the worker bees will drag the male bees outside of the colony to die so they don't waste resources. It was really amazing and I started to read more about bees."

Grozinger began looking for a laboratory to do post-doctoral research where she could use her training in molecular biology (which focused on studying enzymes involved in gene regulation and chromatin remodeling) to study the mechanisms regulating behavior in bees. It turned out there was only one place she truly considered: the laboratory of Beckman affiliate faculty member Gene Robinson, a professor of Integrative Biology and nationally-known expert on the honeybee.

"I realized that with the new molecular tools available like microarrays we would no longer be limited to traditional genetic model organisms and could start expanding our studies to other systems," Grozinger said. "Gene's lab was a perfect fit - he was actually developing microarrays at the point that I contacted him - so the timing was just right. I didn't actually even interview anywhere else."

Grozinger also joined the Beckman Institute Fellows program in 2001, an experience she remembers fondly. "It was really wonderful to be able to interact with such an interesting and diverse group of people," she said. Grozinger left Illinois in 2004 to become an Assistant Professor of Entomology and Insect Genomics at North Carolina State University, where she continues and expands the work she started with Robinson into how pheromones regulate behavior. She said Robinson has been a big influence on her.

"Gene was an excellent mentor, and a great role model," Grozinger said. "Often, when I am facing a challenging situation, I think, 'what would Gene do' and that has helped me enormously."

That influence has been especially helpful as Grozinger began her own teaching career and research lab at North Carolina State.

Robinson said he was impressed by Grozinger's ability to refocus her research interests in a different area after getting a Ph.D.

"Christina made a huge switch in research paths by joining my lab. She had never before worked with a whole organism!" Robinson said. "She adjusted beautifully. We discussed the need for her to get totally steeped in her new area, so that she could not only do the project we designed, but develop the ability to think critically and creatively about the issues that that the work addressed, namely social regulation of brain gene expression. This she did and the evidence for the development of these abilities is very clear."

From what Robinson observed, it seems that Grozinger did indeed find her muse in Illinois.

"Christina was a hard-working and highly motivated postdoctoral researcher," he said. "It was easy to see that she 'fell in love' with the bees and was driven to discover what they could teach us about social regulation of gene expression."

Grozinger's current research on pheromone regulation of behavior focuses primarily on honeybees, but she also has collaborations involving fruit flies and bumble bees, and will be welcoming another former student of Robinson's next spring for a project studying paper wasps.