Dr. Rachel Hirst and Dr. Nicole Cyr from Stonehill College will be coming to present on November 20th from 12–1 in S538. Dr. Hirst is an assistant professor of biology and Dr. Cyr is a professor of biology and neuroscience.
Dr. Cyr’s Biography
Dr. Cyr joined the Biology Department as an assistant professor in 2014. She comes to Stonehill from Brown University and Rhode Island Hospital where she was a postdoctoral research associate. Her research, which she presented at several national meetings, focused on biomedical mechanisms regulating obesity. Her dissertation at Tufts University focused on vertebrate endocrinology.
Dr. Cyr’s previous teaching appointments include Tufts University where she was an instructor in endocrinology and Beloit College where she taught general biology and zoology.
Dr. Cyr is continuing her research of the neuroendocrine basis of obesity. She has two major projects both of which focus on understanding changes in metabolic neurohormones during obesity and how the pathways involved could be targeted for anti-obesity drugs. In one line of investigation, she is researching the effect of obesity-induced endoplasmic reticulum stress in the brain on the appetite-suppressing hormone alpha-MSH. The other line of investigation aims to determine how the enzyme Sirtuin 1 regulates the thyroid and stress axes.
Dr. Hirt’s Biography
Dr. Hirst joined the Biology Department as an assistant professor at her bachelor alma mater in 2011. She comes to Stonehill from an assistant professorship at Massasoit Community College. Before that, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Medical Microbiology at Tufts university. She received her Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology at Penn State.
Dr. Hirst focuses her research on genome sequencing and cultivating STEM pathways from two year institutions to four year universities.