Sarah M. Leupen
Assistant Professor

Office: Rm. 346 CWSC
Phone: (740) 368-3882

Biography

Courses taught

Research interests

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Biography:

Sarah Leupen obtained her undergraduate degree at Oberlin College and her Ph.D. in the Neuroscience and Reproductive Science programs at Northwestern University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University, then took a year off, during which she lived and did volunteer work in the Suriname rain forest. She came to OWU in the fall of 2004.

Courses Taught:

Dr. Leupen teaches Human Physiology (ZOOL 325), Comparative Physiology (ZOOL 335), and Animal Reproduction (ZOOL 100.3), as well as a seminar every fall; this fall’s, taught with Jed Burtt, is Reproduction and Sexual Selection in the Reptiles. In the spring, she will teach a freshman tutorial with Jeff Nunemacher in the Math department, titled “Why Size Matters in the Lives of Animals.”

Research Interests:

Her research interests include communication within the components of the reproductive system, especially the integration of the brain's inputs to that system. She focuses on the “master reproductive hormone,” gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), which is produced in the hypothalamus. Neurons that make GnRH receive information from at least 30 different parts of the brain—information about season, presence of potential mates, nutritional status, stress, health, and numerous other factors— as well as the gonads, and somehow integrate all this information to “decide” whether to, for example, go through puberty, ovulate, increase or decrease sperm production, and so on. She is interested in a number of inputs to this system, especially seasonal (daylength) and immune inputs, and also in how normal signaling within the reproductive system could potentially be disrupted by environmental contaminants, particularly during development.

Although students working with Dr. Leupen use a variety of models to explore a wide array of physiological, reproductive and neurobiological questions, the main animal model in the laboratory is the axolotl, an aquatic salamander which has a long and storied history as a lab animal and is a particularly good model for testing ideas about disruption of reproductive development.

Sarah Leupen spends most of her free time acting silly with her 2- year-old twin boys, Ben and Alex, and her husband, Daryl, as well as enjoying great books and great music, baking pies, and doing nearly anything out-of-doors. Except baking pies.

Department of Zoology
Ohio Wesleyan University | Delaware, OH 43015
Department Phone (740) 368-3885