Biology department welcomes new faculty for fall 2025
The Department of Biology welcomes its newest tenure-line faculty members.
John Majoris, assistant professor of biology, researches the dispersal of coral larvae. In coral reef ecosystems, tiny larvae develop for several days to months before settling in costal habitats. Through his work, studying dispersal traits and larval behaviors, Majoris explores the consequences of coral dispersal processes on the ecology, evolution, and conservation of reef associated species.
Majoris also has given many scientific outreach talks including talks on, “How do reef fish larvae find their way home?” and “Everything you need to know
about clownfish.” His research has been published in journals such as PNAS, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Aquaculture, and Marine Biology.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Majoris was an assistant professor of marine biology at Texas A&M University Corpus Cristi from 2023 to 2025. He was also a research scientist and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas Austin Marine Science Institute from 2021 to 2023, a postdoctoral fellow at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia from 2019 to 2021, and a postdoctoral associate at Boston University from 2017 to 2018. Majoris earned his doctoral degree in biology from Boston University in 2017 and his bachelor’s degree in marine biology and aquaculture from the Florida Institute of Technology in 2009.
Juan Manuel Vazquez, assistant professor of biology, investigates the evolution of longevity and health span in bats and whales. His work focuses on answering interdisciplinary questions on aging using cellular and molecular biology, comparative evolutionary genomics, and population genomics. Using this methodology allows him to not only identify genes and regulatory pathways associated with the evolution of longevity; but also, how the mechanisms behind these findings fit in a native context.
Vazquez received a Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers (MOSAIC) postdoctoral career transition award to promote diversity from the National Institutes of Health in 2024 and a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology to study the evolution and genomics of longevity in 2021. His research has been published in journals such as Science, Nature Communications, Cell Reports, and BMC Biology.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Vazquez was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley from 2020 to 2025. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in human genetics from the University of Chicago in 2020, respectively, and bachelor’s degrees in biology, molecular genetics and chemistry from the University of Rochester in 2015.