University of North Texas 
Mauricio Antunes - Assistant Professor
Mauricio Antunes, Ph.D. received his B.S. degree in Agronomy and M.S. degree in Crop
Sciences from the Universidade Federal de Viçosa in Brazil. He then moved to West
Lafayette, Indiana, where he earned a Ph.D. degree in Plant Molecular Biology at Purdue
University, under the supervision of Nick Carpita and Tom Hodges. After completing
his doctoral degree, Antunes joined June Medford's group at Colorado State University
as a postdoctoral fellow, where he was involved in pioneering work in plant synthetic
biology to rationally engineer plants to function as sensitive and specific sensors
of substances of interest to humans. After spending one year working in Maureen McCann's
lab at the Center for Direct Catalytic Conversion of Biomass to Biofuels (C3Bio) at
Purdue University, Antunes returned to Colorado State University in 2010 as a Research
Assistant Professor in the Biology Department. In 2018, Dr. Antunes joined the Department
of Biological Sciences and the BioDiscovery Institute at UNT.
E-mail: Mauricio[dot]Antunes[at]unt[dot]edu
Savio De Siqueira Ferreira - Post-Doctoral Researcher
Savio de Siqueira Ferreira started his academic career working with plant viruses (Geminivirideae family) at Universidade Federal de Viçosa - UFV (Brazil), where he received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Biochemistry (2006 and 2008). In 2009, he changed field of study to work with sugarcane transcriptome, during his PhD in Biochemistry at Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil), with special interest in genes related to secondary cell wall metabolism and transcription factors regulatory networks. After receiving his Doctoral degree (2013) he started a post-doctoral fellow at the same lab (2014-2015), studying transcription factors, promoter characterization and helping in the sugarcane genome effort, with a brief period (5 months) as a visiting post-doc at The Ohio State University. After a short time back to UFV (2016) studying the transcriptome (RNA-seq) of coffee-rust fungus, he started to work as a post-doctoral fellow (2017-2019) at the LigninLab (Universidade de São Paulo) to work with phenylpropanoid metabolism and lignification in grasses. In January 2020 he joined Antunes Lab to develop studies in synthetic biology, aiming to design genetic circuits to modulate phenylpropanoid metabolism in plants.
E-mail: Savio[dot]Desiqueiraferreira[at]unt[dot]edu
Jordan LaChance - Graduate student
Jordan LaChance received her B.S. in Biology from the University of North Texas in May 2021. Here, she worked on and presented research highlighting the biochemical networks of fatty acid biosynthesis in developing embryos of Physaria fendleri, a promising alternative oilseed crop. She then was accepted into UNT's PhD program for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in August 2021. Currently, Jordan is conducting research to expand understanding of Physaria fendleri metabolism and validate molecular tools to engineer genetic improvements in the species for industrial applications.
E-mail: JordanLachance[at]my[dot]unt[dot]edu
Md Shoyeb - Graduate student
Md Shoyeb completed his BSc and MS degree in Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology from Jashore University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh. He received the Vice Chancellor award for his outstanding result and joined as a faculty member in the same department in 2018. He started as a PhD student in UNT's Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Graduate Program from Fall'22. Now, Shoyeb is working to determine whether the long-distance mobility of miRNA via the plant phloem is determined by the location of expression or not. He loves to travel and read historical fiction.
E-mail: MdShoyeb[at]my[dot]unt[dot]edu
Jesseca Hemminger - Graduate student
Jesseca received her Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology from Texas Lutheran University in May of 2022. In her time there, she worked on an individual research project that focused on the role of secondary metabolites inhibiting DNA extraction and sequencing samples of Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora. She began UNT's Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Graduate program in January 2023 and is working towards her PhD. Her hobbies include crafting and listening to Taylor Swift.
E-mail: JessecaHemminger[at]my[dot]unt[dot]edu
Undergraduate students
Gabrielle Rust
Gabrielle Rust is a second-year student majoring in Biology with minors in Chemistry
and History. She is currently investigating the phenotypic differences caused by overexpression
and lack of expression (mutations) of specific microRNAs in Arabidopsis. Outside of
the lab, her interests include reading, baking, and printmaking.
Tanvi Krovvidi
Tanvi is a senior at the Texas Academy of Math and Sciences (TAMS) Program at UNT. Tanvi is currently working with Jesseca on uncovering the role(s) of micropeptides encoded in microRNA genes.