Mary Preuss
Assistant Professor | Biological Sciences

Plant cell biologist Mary Preuss arrived at Webster in summer 2009 as a full-time faculty member in the Biological Sciences department. Diving right in, in her first year she’s teaching Essentials of Biology, Virology, and supervising senior research students, among other duties. Her husband is also a plant biologist at Monsanto, but their two children are a little too young to declare whether they’ll enter the family field.

Global Thinking sat down with Preuss to learn a little more about her.

Global Thinking: Where did you grow up?
Preuss: Lake Zurich, Ill., outside of Chicago.

GT: You earned your bachelor’s at Cornell and Ph.D. at University of California-Davis. How did you follow that path, and what led you to biology?

Preuss: “At Cornell, I remember my mom liked the campus. [laughs] But it was a great school. In high school I liked history and biology, but my family encouraged me to choose biology – always thinking it would be ‘more practical.’”

GT: And what led you to California?

Preuss: “Graduate school. I already had two brothers living in California at the time, so that helped. And they had a really good plant biology program.

GT: That’s when you specialized in plant biology. Why that specialty?

Preuss: Well, there is so much we can learn from plant cell biology.

GT: Give us an example.

Preuss: Take cotton. Cotton fibers are actually very long, single cells, but they are machines for growth. These can then be used to understand the mechanics of how growth occurs. Also their cell walls are composed primarily of cellulose, which is used to make bioethanol. So this kind of research can be quite important for biofuel production.

That’s one model for how understanding cellular structure can help us. But we’re just scratching the surface.

GT: How do you like Webster so far?

Preuss: Everyone’s been so welcoming. It’s nice meeting so many people from so many different disciplines. That’s very refreshing. At bigger universities, you might just be around biologists – or even just plant biologists, so the variety is nice.

GT: Did you have exposure to Webster before you arrived?

Preuss: I did, yes. I was doing post-doc work at the Danforth Plant Science Center, and I actually mentored a Webster student there – and was impressed, of course.

GT: Finally, do you have any hobbies or outside interests?

Preuss: I do, though I don’t get to delve into any of them anymore! We get so busy with kids – we have a son, 2, and a daughter, almost 5. My husband and I do like to scuba dive. We were actually certified in Missouri, down at Table Rock Lake, so we try to get a dive in whenever we go on trips. We just went to Israel last summer and dove in the Red Sea. And we’ve done it in Monterrey, Hawaii, and the Caribbean.