Trinity College is blessed with incredible professors who mentor and grow students across all disciplines. Get to know Dr. Adina Stanculescu, our Assistant Professor of Biology who has taught at Trinity since 2019 and has participated in cancer research.
Dr. Adina Stanculescu, Assistant Professor of Biology
Q. What does the integration of faith and learning look like in your classroom?
A. I believe that God is the Creator of the physical world. Science makes so much more sense when we believe that there is a Designer, and I love to teach my students that aspect.
My favorite way to foster learning is to introduce recent research into my classroom lectures, so my students can see how new developments are currently integrating into the industry. It makes them aware of what is going on in both the academic and professional spheres of science.
Q. What are some highlights of your academic career?
A. I work with smart medicine, which is the medicine that is designed to attack only cancer and not the rest of the tissue around it. Some academic highlights for me have been the identification of new targets to develop smart medicine for. My colleagues and I understood that some of the chemotherapy that we used was not ideal because there was inflammation present in the local microenvironment. That was where diet and nutrition came in to make the chemotherapy more effective.
Q. What misconception about your field would you like to correct?
A. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misconception concerning smart medicine. It stems from an abundance of misinformation. People can avoid that simply by going to reputable sources for information, or by talking to anyone they know who is an expert in the field.
"Science makes so much more sense when we believe that there is a Designer, and I love to teach my students that aspect."
Q. What was your college experience?
A. I went to the University of Illinois at Chicago for my undergraduate studies in Biochemistry. Then I returned there for my doctorate, which was in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology!
Q. What is a hobby you have that is unrelated to your area of study?
A. I’m a reader and really enjoy reading nonfiction books. Surprisingly, I grew up reading a lot of books on Christian life and doctrine. A.W. Tozer, Andrew Murray, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones were some of my favorite authors.
Q. What is something you don’t think your students would guess about you?
A. I have five kids! My youngest is in second grade and my oldest is a senior in high school, so they cover a pretty wide age range. People think I’m so young that there’s no way I have five kids, but you can get a doctorate in science and do research and have a family. Of course, I did have to pick and choose at times; I stayed home for a few years to raise my children. It’s true that you can’t do everything at once, but you can certainly pursue more than one thing!
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BA in Biology