FIU Discovery

Situated in South Florida, gateway to the tropics, and surrounded by the Florida Everglades and diverse marine environments, the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida International University offers a unique combination of living laboratories and access to biodiversity. With more than 50 core faculty, the department is research-intensive with funding in grants and contracts worth more than $10 million annually. Biological Sciences faculty conduct research on all seven continents and in cutting-edge research labs. Research from these labs has a global impact on some of the worlds most pressing issues. The research interests of our faculty span many levels of biological organization from molecules to ecosystems, and include both field- and laboratory-based studies in marine, terrestrial and freshwater environments. Faculty in the department address basic biological questions about how organisms work, how they develop, how they interact with other organisms and their environments, and how they have evolved over time. Active areas of research include cell and molecular biology, ecology, climate change, functional morphology, genetics, conservation biology and biodiversity, neurobiology and behavior, evolutionary biology and population genetics, phylogenetics and bioinformatics, physiology, virology, microbiology, and paleobiology. Many of our faculty specialize in tropical systems, including tropical ecosystems and tropical diseases.