Department Welcomes New Appointees

Appointment of Professor Joy Mench Launches Animal Welfare Program

It is with great pleasure that the Department announces the appointment of Dr. Joy Mench as Professor of Animal Science in the field of animal welfare, beginning November 1, 1995. Her appointment in Animal Science (80%) is shared with the Department of Avian Sciences (20%).

Dr. Mench's reputation as a teacher is outstanding. In 1989-90 she was awarded a Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellowship to develop an advanced studies course on the ethical, scientific and technical perspectives of animal welfare. At UC Davis, Dr. Mench plans to teach a similar course as well as serve as a course team leader for the Ethics of Animal Use course.

Dr. Mench joined the faculty of the Department of Poultry Science of the University of Maryland in 1985, where she remained until this fall. Dr. Mench is an internationally recognized authority on the physiological, behavioral and ethical aspects of animal welfare. Her research has concentrated on social, nutritional and developmental factors influencing the well-being of domestic and captive wild animals.

Dr. Mench is currently Chair of the Animal Care Committee for the Animal Behavior Society, the largest professional scientific organization of animal behaviorists in North America, and she is a former Chair of the Animal Care Committee of the Poultry Science Association. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Scientist's Center for Animal Welfare (SCAW), the largest scientific organization addressing animal welfare issues in North America, and has served as Chair of its Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) Evaluation Committee since 1988.

Dr. Mench participated in writing the "Guide for the Care and Use of Agricultural Animals in Agricultural Research and Teaching," the primary source of guidelines for using agricultural animals in teaching and research. She is currently chairing a committee to evaluate the use of the "Guide" in US institutions and write an addendum to it.

Mary Delany Appointed as Assistant Professor

In July 1, 1995, Dr. Mary E. Delany joined the faculty as Assistant Professor in Developmental Genetics. Dr. Delany's appointment at UC Davis is shared between the Department of Animal Science (40%) and the Department of Avian Sciences (60%). After spending two years at Pennsylvania State University as a cytogenetics research technician, she began graduate studies at Cornell University where she obtained an M.S. and Ph.D. in Genetics in 1984 and 1987, respectively. After completing her doctorate, Dr. Delany remained at Cornell as a Research Associate in the Department of Poultry and Avian Sciences (1988-1990) and the Department of Avian and Aquatic Animal Medicine (1990-1995).

Dr. Delany's research over the last decade has concentrated on the genetic regulation of normal and abnormal development in the chick embryo. More specifically, she has concentrated on the biological effects of gene copy number variation (gene additions and deletions) at the developmental, cellular and molecular levels. In her new position, Dr. Delany will concentrate on the contribution of genetic variation to early embryonic arrest, teratogenesis and mortality and patterns of the regulation, recruitment and cellular expression of genes during the early development and morphogenesis of the chick.

Mary Delany and her husband Bernie May, also featured in this newsletter, reside in Davis with their three children, Donald, Abigail and Hannah,

Bernie May Joins Department as Associate Research Biologist

The Department of Animal Science welcomes Dr. Bernie P May as an Associate Research Biologist. Dr. May received a B.S. in Molecular Biology and an M.S. in Fisheries at the University of Washington in 1973 and 1975, respectively. In 1980, Dr. May obtained a Ph.D. at the Pennsylvania State University. His research at Penn State focused on the salmonid genome.

After serving as a Research Associate at Penn State in 1980-81, Dr. May moved to Cornell University where he assumed duties as Research Associate (SRA) and Director of the Cornell Laboratory for Ecological and Evolutionary Genetics (CLEEG) in the Section of Ecology and Systematics (1981-88). From 1988 to 1992, Dr. May was a Senior Research Associate (SRA II) and Director of CLEEG in the Department of Natural Resources. Since 1992, he has been a Senior Research Associate and Director of the Genome Variation Analysis Facility in the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell. He has hosted over 30 graduate students in his lab since 1982 and became a member of the Graduate Faculty at Cornell in 1992.

Dr. May's research interests are broad-based including studies of genome structure, population analysis, mixed stock analysis, genomic manipulation, effects of non-indigenous species/populations, and isolate identification. While his published research has been largely on salmonid fishes and commercial mushrooms, he has worked on over 100 other taxa (fish, fungi, birds, mammals, plants, invertebrates).

One of his primary roles has been to provide a genetics perspective to the collaborative projects with which he has been associated. During the past two years, he has adopted new techniques in molecular biology to study questions dealing with social behavior, cell line authentication, population structuring, subspecies identification, systematics and maintenance of genetic variation in small isolated populations. These techniques can be used to develop criteria for identifying natural populations for preservation, measuring the loss of genetic variability, determining the extent to which native populations can be preserved after extensive stocking with non-indigenous populations, and defining how different populations must be for them to be maintained and managed separately

Dr. May has published over 70 refereed papers in the last 15 years. His research has been supported from grants obtained from such agencies as the National Science Foundation, the US Fish & Wildlife Service and the National Biological Survey.

Dr. May will be working with Professor Graham Gall in research of mutual interest, namely the genetic improvement of fish populations (e.g., salmon, tilapia). He will share a laboratory with Professor Gall. Dr. May is the spouse of Assistant Professor Mary Delany, also featured in this newsletter.