Meet the scientists Behind BIO5
At an annual community event in early April, attendees heard from five accomplished University of Arizona researchers from diverse scientific disciplines during a series of intimate fireside chats. Read snapshots of these conversations.
Alexander Bucksch was one of five BIO5 members and University of Arizona faculty featured in fireside chats that explored the stories and collaborative science at the BIO5 Institute.
Lily Howe, BIO5 Institute
From the hidden world of plant roots, to the mysteries of the brain and the future of women’s health, the work of BIO5 Institute researchers spans a wide range of disciplines.
But at its core, it shares a common thread: tackling the world’s toughest problems through curiosity and collaboration.
On April 3, five University of Arizona researchers shared their scientific motivations, exciting findings, and the future of their work with dozens of members of the Arizona community as part of the annual Behind BIO5 event. These intimate conversations offer a behind-the-scenes look at the people, stories, and passions driving some of today’s most innovative scientific discoveries.
BIO5 members Alexander Bucksch, Leslie Farland, Nirav Merchant, Lee Ryan, and Judith Su, gave insights into the work they do and what led them into their field of research.
Alexander Bucksch, PhD, uses imaging and technology to transform agriculture.
Alexander Bucksch, associate professor in the School of Plant Sciences at the U of A College of Agriculture, Life & Environmental Sciences, is changing the way scientists understand plant roots.
As a student, he became fascinated with reconstructing and measuring complex shapes from data. He started with simple architectural forms and soon moved towards natural systems like trees.
Today, his work focuses on the intricate and hidden root systems that are essential to plant life, and the challenges they present.
"You don’t really see inside the soil unless you have millions of dollars," said Bucksch. "And if you want to scan something like a whole field, that becomes a project that could take an entire generation to complete."
Instead of relying on expensive tools, Bucksch’s team developed a different strategy. They dig up the plants, wash the roots with soap and water, and use a low-cost imaging device to collect large amounts of data quickly.
"It looks like a drum that takes about 800 pictures of the root structure in two to three minutes," said Bucksch. "That’s your scalable solution. It’s simple and it works."
But the research goes beyond just gathering data. It aims to solve real-world problems. The shape of roots encodes how plants manage drought, absorb nutrients, and interact with their surrounding plants.
Still, breeding plants for root traits is an area that has been largely overlooked. Bucksch and his team are working to change that by identifying traits that control resource uptake and exchange of plants to improve resilience under environmental stress.
Leslie Farland, ScD, works to improve women’s reproductive and gynecologic health.
Leslie Farland did not initially plan to become an epidemiologist. Her original goal was to pursue a career in medicine.
While interning in the trauma department at a hospital in Chicago, she quickly realized that working with blood was not the right fit for her. At the same time, she was taking an epidemiology course that opened the door to a new path.
“I did not have to deal with the blood and gore, but I could influence population health on a greater scale,” she explained.
Today, Farland is an associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. Her research focuses on improving women’s reproductive and gynecological health.
“Women’s health is interesting for me because it’s this intersection of sociology, and there are still so many unknowns, it's an area with lots of opportunities to expand,” Farland said.
Her work includes research on endometriosis and menstrual health, including a COVID-19 study funded by the BIO5 Institute, that was one of the first to show changes in menstrual cycles after infection.
Nirav Merchant (left) bridges the gap between computational tools and scientific research.
For Nirav Merchant, finding the right place for his research was not always straightforward.
“My interest has always been between biology and automation,” Merchant explained. “Whether it was early robotics or computation, it was hard to find a discipline that combined that.”
Today, as director of the Data Science Institute at the University of Arizona, Merchant has played a key role in shaping that intersection. His work focuses on developing scalable computational platforms that support open science and accelerate discovery across a wide range of disciplines.
In the early days of DNA sequencing, Merchant recognized the emerging opportunities in computational biology and bioinformatics. However, the tools available at the time were neither scalable nor easily accessible.
Seeing a need for better systems, particularly in neuroscience, he stepped in to help build the infrastructure that researchers required.
At the Data Science Institute, his mission is to create and share advanced data science tools, making them accessible to a broader scientific community.
But the mission does not stop there. Merchant is equally passionate about teaching students how to use these tools and how to bridge the gap between programming and real-world research.
“We are not just building infrastructure. We are building capacity for the next generation of scientists,” Merchant said.
Lee Ryan, PhD, (left) investigates how our brain changes with aging.
As an undergraduate at the University of Toronto, Lee Ryan worked in a cognitive science lab where she began meeting individuals with amnesia. She was fascinated by their inability to remember moments that had just occurred.
“It was incredible to work with people who had no memory of the recent past,” Ryan said.
That early curiosity led her to graduate school at the University of British Columbia, where she encountered one of the first Siemens Magnets, used to image brains.
This hands-on experience with brain imaging opened the door to a new way of understanding the human mind, and Ryan was hooked.
Today, she is a professor of psychology and neurology at the University of Arizona and serves as director of the Brain and Body Imaging Center at the BIO5 Institute. Her work focuses on how the brain changes as we age.
“I always tell my graduate students, the topic of aging becomes much more interesting as you get older,” she said with a smile.
Her lab brings together a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, physicists, engineers, and statisticians to develop innovative imaging techniques that examine both the structure and function of the brain.
“We have people who are developing new methods, literally every year, and applying them to help us with different aspects of not only the structure of the human brain but also the functions of it,” said Ryan.
Judith Su, PhD, (left) develops small sensors to solve big problems.
The spark that led Judith Su to a career in biomedical engineering came unexpectedly.
As an undergraduate, she watched the 1966 science fiction film Fantastic Voyage. The film’s premise of exploring the human body at a microscopic level fascinated her and planted a seed that would grow into a lifelong passion.
At the same time, Su was working in a biomedical optics lab, where her interest in microscopy continued to grow.
“I was working in a lab that was doing two photon microscopy, and it was the most high-tech thing I had ever seen,” she said. “Then in graduate school, we started to build sensors and began asking, can we make a sensor with the ultimate level of sensitivity? And then we started to do that.”
Now, as an associate professor of biomedical engineering and optical sciences at the University of Arizona, Su focuses on developing highly sensitive optical sensors capable of detecting disease biomarkers at the molecular level.
Her lab’s research includes innovative methods for identifying diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s at the earliest possible stages.
Su also highlights the importance of collaboration across disciplines. Her team works closely with chemists, psychologists, and computer scientists to address complex health challenges.
“The most pressing problems are often very interdisciplinary,” she said.
Su’s goal is not only to advance medical technology, but to develop new ways to detect illness early, when it can make the biggest impact.