After 45 years of service, Terry Hawkins retired from his “home away from home.”
Meet six team leaders who together represent 100 years of experience in primate care and management. We asked them to share what drew them to SNPRC, some of the highlights and challenges of working with primates, and what they wish more people understood about their work.
HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING CENTER SITE ENGINEER Sandy Smith doesn’t “sit and do nothing” well. “I guess I’m the type of person that if my plumbing breaks, I’ll fix it. How do I fix it? Let me go on YouTube. It’s not that I’m cheap, I just like challenges.”
Texas Biomed’s Southwest National Primate Research Center (SNPRC) houses more than 450 marmosets – the largest marmoset research colony in North America and second largest in the world.
There are many things you should know about Hsiang-Ming (Anthony) Wang, PhD, Texas Biomed’s Director of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS). He and his wife are proud parents of two children. He is a figure skater, photographer and first-time cat dad. He enjoys building computers and 3D-printing his own contraptions. And, he is a total people person.
From the time she was a child, Shannan Hall-Ursone, DVM, loved animals. “My mother was an elementary science teacher,” explains Dr. Hall-Ursone, who grew up in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. “She would bring home a snake or a guinea pig for the holidays and I liked taking care of them….