Kalamazoo College will welcome two new tenure-track faculty members this fall, expanding opportunities for students to study neuroscience, molecular biology and contemporary interdisciplinary art practices.
Quinlan Doctrove will join the College as an assistant professor of biology, while Nayda Collazo-Llorens will become an assistant professor of art and art history. Doctrove studies the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying neurological disease. Collazo-Llorens is an artist whose work explores mapping, memory, place, movement and dislocation through printmaking, drawing, painting, digital media, video, and installation works.
At the University of Michigan, Doctrove conducted doctoral research in neuroscience in the laboratory of Miriam Meisler in the Department of Human Genetics. His research included investigating genetic mutations associated with neurodegenerative disease and developing potential therapeutic approaches for FIG4 deficiency, a genetic disorder that affects lysosomal function.
Doctrove earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry with a minor in psychology from the University of Michigan-Dearborn in 2019. As an undergraduate, he conducted research on riboflavin-binding proteins and contributed to the development of a riboflavin deficiency assay.
He also has experience teaching and mentoring students. At Michigan, Doctrove served as a teaching assistant for undergraduate molecular and cellular biology laboratory courses and a graduate-level human anatomy laboratory course. He also mentored undergraduate researchers and participated in programs that introduced high school and middle school students to genetics, neuroscience and hands-on scientific investigation.
Collazo-Llorens has taught at K for more than a decade through a series of part-time and full-time appointments. Most recently, she served as a full-time visiting assistant professor during the 2025–26 academic year.
Collazo-Llorens earned an M.F.A. in studio art from New York University in 2002 and a B.F.A. with distinction in printmaking and graphic design from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 1990. Her recent individual exhibitions include “expand blur collapse” at El Schomburg Espacio de Arte Interdisciplinario in Chicago and “Topografía extendida” at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan. Her work also has been exhibited at the University of Michigan’s Stamps Gallery, the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, and venues in New York, Miami and other national and international venues. Her work is featured in the book Vaiven: 21st-Century Art of Puerto Rico and Its Diaspora (University of Minnesota Press) and Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago, (Duke University Press).
Together, Doctrove and Collazo-Llorens will give K students opportunities to learn from faculty members actively engaged in their fields, from research into the molecular mechanisms of neurological disease to artistic investigations of place, memory and community.
“Quinlan Doctrove and Nayda Collazo-Llorens bring valuable expertise, creativity and a strong commitment to student learning to K,” Provost Danette Ifert Johnson said. “Their work reflects the breadth of inquiry that defines a liberal arts education. We are delighted to have them.”
