Sydha Salihu, Ph.D.

Teaching interests

Dr. Salihu started teaching in the department of Biology in Spring 2005 with the plant physiology course. She currently teaches non-majors general biology courses BIOL 101 and BIOL 102. These are large class enrollments and she truly enjoys interacting with the students. She enjoys the challenge of making biology relevant for the non-majors. Her classes generally are a mix of the traditional and the new with lectures, and student participation via the use of clickers and in-class activities. The greatest satisfaction for me comes from making biology meaningful to the non-majors.

Tissue Engineering, Plant Physiology and Herbicide mode of action

Her dissertation research focused on the basis of selectivity of the herbicide isoxaben (Gallery) in three different nursery species namely wintercreeper (Euonymus alatus), burning bush (Eunonymus fortunei) and Ajuga (ajuga reptans) using field, greenhouse, as well as lab studies. Although her graduate work both at Penn State and Virginia Tech focused on plants, she obtained a post-doctoral fellowship in the department of Orthopedics, WVU where she was able to gain experience with animal models, and other lab skills like cell culture techniques, PCR, Image analysis and immunohistochemistry. Her work specifically focused on developing a system to study the effect of mechanical stimulation on chondrogenesis in the cell line ATDC5. It also gave her an opportunity to supervise summer students and medical students’ research projects.