06/22/2026
🔦 Faculty Spotlight 🔦
Dr. Huggins is an alumnus of Albright College where he majored in biochemistry. While there, he undertook research projects in electron microscopy, and synthesizing porphyrin-ring compounds for magnetic resonance imaging.
He earned a Master’s of Marine Science at the University of Delaware College of Marine Science where he isolated and characterized 3,4- dihydroxyphenylalanine-containing proteins from the eggshell of the turbellarian worm, Belloura candida, an ectoparasite on the horseshoe crab. Dr Huggins worked for two years at the University of California at Santa Barbara, examining proteins that control the biomineralization of abalone shells. He earned his Ph.D. In the laboratory of Dr. Bill Lennarz at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where his research demonstrated that the protein Tolloid plays a role in sea urchin gastrulation and collagen processing.
After earning his PhD, Dr. Huggins worked as a post- doctoral researcher at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University. There, he studied the transforming growth factor beta signal transduction pathway in fruit flies. He identified the gene “without children” as a modifier of TGFß signaling. For over 20 years, Dr Huggins has taught cell biology, genetics, and human anatomy and physiology at West Virginia Wesleyan. He has worked extensively with the West Virginia IDEA Network for Biomedical Research Excellence, examining the effects of natural products on bacterial and cancer cell growth. During his time here, he has had the pleasure of working with over 50 student- researchers on a diverse set of projects and published peer-reviewed papers with eleven of his students. Much of his students’ work has been funded through WV-INBRE and state grants totaling over $600,000.
