Stephanie Watts, Ph.D., professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine (MSUCOM), has been named a recipient of the 2025-2026 William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award – the highest award given to faculty at MSU. She will officially receive the honor at an awards ceremony on April 7.
An All-University Awards Committee appointed by the president chooses winners of the prestigious award based on outstanding total service to MSU. No more than 10 William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Awards are made each year.
Dr. Watts has a prolific history of teaching, researching and publishing innovative scientific discoveries since joining MSU as a professor in 1995. This month, she also began her 32nd year as a Principal Investigator.
What she enjoys most about having her own lab since 1995, is simply learning.
“And learning with people,” Dr. Watts emphasized. “And constantly asking, ‘But what if? Could this be?’ Being surrounded by people who are willing to ask questions, to take risks. I ask a lot of questions, but I'll tell people I don't have a good idea about how to answer a particular question. Maybe we can figure this out together. So, my teachers are the group of people that I direct in the program project grant that is about 38 people strong right now. They teach me every single day.
“And I'm so lucky to get to learn,” she added. “I love being a student of science. That is invigorating for me, as well as having trainees who are willing to say, ‘Okay, I have no clue what I'm doing, but I'm going to try.’ And they do. So, it's the excitement of discovery, of learning, of knowing that we're doing our very best to protect and promulgate this important thing called science.”
Dr. Watts and her team study vascular mechanisms in cardiovascular diseases, specifically hypertension and hypertension associated with obesity. The Watts lab is driven by the belief that blood vessels are key to understanding hypertension and obesity. The goal is to treat and, hopefully, prevent these diseases – two of the biggest chronic health crises that plague our nation.
“But probably the hardest thing in the world to change is human behavior,” Dr. Watts said. “Most clinicians will tell you it's nearly impossible, and that means that the medications, pharmacology, drugs we use, are the next step towards treatment and prevention. So, one part of our program is the space of drug discovery.”
Part of the appeal of pharmacology for Dr. Watts is that it is translational science because so much of the research focuses on potential medicines. The Watts lab is working on a promising new drug that is designed to lower blood pressure in patients who are resistant to normal blood pressure medications, though it requires further testing.
“It makes so much sense that drugs work by your body having these things called receptors,” Dr. Watts explained. “So, they receive a drug, and those drugs tell your body what to do or to stop doing. And pharmacology takes advantage of the knowledge we have about those receptors and our endogenous drugs (drugs naturally produced by the body). You have endogenous substances that work as drugs flowing through your body every second. That's what maintains your blood pressure. It is the fact that you have norepinephrine combining with a receptor, saying, ‘You need to work’ that helps you have a blood pressure! So, with drug discovery, we try to mimic what already happens in the body by interfering with or improving how that works in the body.”
After working on the vascular mechanisms in cardiovascular diseases project for nearly 20 years, Dr. Watts says she is very close to developing new molecules that can activate the specific receptor(s) that may lower blood pressure in people for whom other drugs don’t work.
A nerd who loves science and her family
An early riser, Dr. Watts gives new meaning to the phrase “morning person.” She typically begins working in the lab no later than 5 a.m., enjoying the quiet time to edit three different journals and do whatever else needs to be done before she makes herself available to her team.
Getting up well before the sun does is a habit she attributes to her father, who began each day with early morning prayers but left the Jesuit seminary about six months before he was to take his final vows. Sharing toast with her dad in the early morning hours as a child was one way she enjoyed treasured time with him alone.
Born in Illinois and a self-proclaimed nerd, Dr. Watts says she fell in love with the periodic table in high school. She graduated at 16, then majored in chemistry at the University of Illinois. Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) welcomed her for graduate school. While there, Dr. Watts was able to complete all her graduate work at Eli Lilly and Co., then did postdoc research in hypertension at the University of Michigan before joining MSU in 1995.
Throughout her education, Dr. Watts didn't have any great designs on becoming a college professor. She just knew she loved science and wanted to do it.
“I know how lucky I am to get to do what I do,” she said. “It's a privilege. Tony, my 32-year-old son, is very disabled. He was born with cerebral palsy and is cognitively and physically impaired. And I have watched him have just about every opportunity in his life taken away from him because of it. So, I have all kinds of opportunity, and much to the chagrin of many of my students, I say, ‘We need to take these opportunities because we can.’”
Dr. Watts also has a younger son, Alex, with her husband, Ned, who retired in 2020 from teaching in the MSU Department of English. Both have been incredibly supportive of her career, though Dr. Watts admits it’s nerve-wracking when she asks the other Dr. Watts to proofread her grants and other paperwork.
“He'll look at me and say, ‘Stephanie, you bury the damn lede all the time. And you still don't know how to use commas.’”
But she knows how to face challenges, big and small. For example, she recalls how some have looked down at her 5’2” frame over the years and asked to see her boss. “I am the boss,” she replied. Being a woman in science brings its own challenges, but Tony is the one who has taught her to put things in perspective.
“All of the difficult health problems, seizures, all those sorts of things that he's had to deal with. He even had to learn how to walk. I mean, really learn how to walk, different from a toddler, and learn how to do all the things that we take for granted. And he still manages to be happy. So, my lesson has always been that I need to get over myself and move forward.”
Leading the way
Dr. Watts makes it clear that being a woman in science is not what should be emphasized about her career.
“I want what we do to be the lead,” she said.
Another research area that Dr. Watts and her lab hope to lead with is the role of the mesothelial serosa, which is the inner lining of the body cavity and all its visceral organs. The primary responsibility of this serosa is to make a lubricating fluid so that organs can slide against one another without friction.
She is essentially trying to understand why a disease like hypertension or obesity harms so many organs, such as the heart, the kidney, the intestines and blood vessels. One commonality is that these organs share the serosa that seems to act as a protective covering yet may be part of what goes wrong in the diseases of hypertension and obesity if it fibroses and doesn't produce the needed liquid.
This hypothesis is only in the discovery phase, but the Watts lab team is working on the grant support to be able to test these ideas. While obtaining research funding has never been easy, Dr. Watts says she is very concerned about the impact of growing misinformation and funding cuts that are currently hurting the scientific community, particularly for young people who are just beginning their path in science.
“People who did grants in the ’60s and ’70s have told me everything they sent in got funded. I have had to fight for everything. Constant re-submissions, just constantly. I've never not known fighting in that way. It's a reality. And it's tiring.
“What's happening right now to NIH (National Institutes of Health), to NSF (National Science Foundation), etc. threatens stability,” she added. “And science must have stability because you build and you build, and science is typically not fast. It's iterative, it goes two steps forward, one step back, and you have a whole line of people all going at different speeds who need to work together to get to a common goal.”
For Dr. Watts, being a professor means teaching, service and research. Her mentors, all along the way, helped her shape her career, and she considers it a privilege to do the same for the trainees who have been in her life. After all, she is most proud of her people.
More than 100 of her “sons and daughters in science” have gone on to work in industry, in academia, in art and more. She bubbles over with excitement when mentioning how one of her grad students will defend her Ph.D. this spring.
“Celebrating her will be one of the happiest things I do,” Dr. Watts said. “If there's such a thing as a legacy, I hope it's that. I hope that people know that they can love science. They can be who they are in it.”
by Lynn Waldsmith
Stephanie Watts, Ph.D., professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine (MSUCOM), has been named a recipient of the 2025-2026 William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award – the highest award given to faculty at MSU. She will officially receive the honor at an awards ceremony on April 7.
An All-University Awards Committee appointed by the president chooses winners of the prestigious award based on outstanding total service to MSU. No more than 10 William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Awards are made each year.
Dr. Watts has a prolific history of teaching, researching and publishing innovative scientific discoveries since joining MSU as a professor in 1995. This month, she also began her 32nd year as a Principal Investigator.
What she enjoys most about having her own lab since 1995, is simply learning.
“And learning with people,” Dr. Watts emphasized. “And constantly asking, ‘But what if? Could this be?’ Being surrounded by people who are willing to ask questions, to take risks. I ask a lot of questions, but I'll tell people I don't have a good idea about how to answer a particular question. Maybe we can figure this out together. So, my teachers are the group of people that I direct in the program project grant that is about 38 people strong right now. They teach me every single day.
“And I'm so lucky to get to learn,” she added. “I love being a student of science. That is invigorating for me, as well as having trainees who are willing to say, ‘Okay, I have no clue what I'm doing, but I'm going to try.’ And they do. So, it's the excitement of discovery, of learning, of knowing that we're doing our very best to protect and promulgate this important thing called science.”
Dr. Watts and her team study vascular mechanisms in cardiovascular diseases, specifically hypertension and hypertension associated with obesity. The Watts lab is driven by the belief that blood vessels are key to understanding hypertension and obesity. The goal is to treat and, hopefully, prevent these diseases – two of the biggest chronic health crises that plague our nation.
“But probably the hardest thing in the world to change is human behavior,” Dr. Watts said. “Most clinicians will tell you it's nearly impossible, and that means that the medications, pharmacology, drugs we use, are the next step towards treatment and prevention. So, one part of our program is the space of drug discovery.”
Part of the appeal of pharmacology for Dr. Watts is that it is translational science because so much of the research focuses on potential medicines. The Watts lab is working on a promising new drug that is designed to lower blood pressure in patients who are resistant to normal blood pressure medications, though it requires further testing.
“It makes so much sense that drugs work by your body having these things called receptors,” Dr. Watts explained. “So, they receive a drug, and those drugs tell your body what to do or to stop doing. And pharmacology takes advantage of the knowledge we have about those receptors and our endogenous drugs (drugs naturally produced by the body). You have endogenous substances that work as drugs flowing through your body every second. That's what maintains your blood pressure. It is the fact that you have norepinephrine combining with a receptor, saying, ‘You need to work’ that helps you have a blood pressure! So, with drug discovery, we try to mimic what already happens in the body by interfering with or improving how that works in the body.”
After working on the vascular mechanisms in cardiovascular diseases project for nearly 20 years, Dr. Watts says she is very close to developing new molecules that can activate the specific receptor(s) that may lower blood pressure in people for whom other drugs don’t work.
A nerd who loves science and her family
An early riser, Dr. Watts gives new meaning to the phrase “morning person.” She typically begins working in the lab no later than 5 a.m., enjoying the quiet time to edit three different journals and do whatever else needs to be done before she makes herself available to her team.
Getting up well before the sun does is a habit she attributes to her father, who began each day with early morning prayers but left the Jesuit seminary about six months before he was to take his final vows. Sharing toast with her dad in the early morning hours as a child was one way she enjoyed treasured time with him alone.
Born in Illinois and a self-proclaimed nerd, Dr. Watts says she fell in love with the periodic table in high school. She graduated at 16, then majored in chemistry at the University of Illinois. Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) welcomed her for graduate school. While there, Dr. Watts was able to complete all her graduate work at Eli Lilly and Co., then did postdoc research in hypertension at the University of Michigan before joining MSU in 1995.
Throughout her education, Dr. Watts didn't have any great designs on becoming a college professor. She just knew she loved science and wanted to do it.
“I know how lucky I am to get to do what I do,” she said. “It's a privilege. Tony, my 32-year-old son, is very disabled. He was born with cerebral palsy and is cognitively and physically impaired. And I have watched him have just about every opportunity in his life taken away from him because of it. So, I have all kinds of opportunity, and much to the chagrin of many of my students, I say, ‘We need to take these opportunities because we can.’”
Dr. Watts also has a younger son, Alex, with her husband, Ned, who retired in 2020 from teaching in the MSU Department of English. Both have been incredibly supportive of her career, though Dr. Watts admits it’s nerve-wracking when she asks the other Dr. Watts to proofread her grants and other paperwork.
“He'll look at me and say, ‘Stephanie, you bury the damn lede all the time. And you still don't know how to use commas.’”
But she knows how to face challenges, big and small. For example, she recalls how some have looked down at her 5’2” frame over the years and asked to see her boss. “I am the boss,” she replied. Being a woman in science brings its own challenges, but Tony is the one who has taught her to put things in perspective.
“All of the difficult health problems, seizures, all those sorts of things that he's had to deal with. He even had to learn how to walk. I mean, really learn how to walk, different from a toddler, and learn how to do all the things that we take for granted. And he still manages to be happy. So, my lesson has always been that I need to get over myself and move forward.”
Leading the way
Dr. Watts makes it clear that being a woman in science is not what should be emphasized about her career.
“I want what we do to be the lead,” she said.
Another research area that Dr. Watts and her lab hope to lead with is the role of the mesothelial serosa, which is the inner lining of the body cavity and all its visceral organs. The primary responsibility of this serosa is to make a lubricating fluid so that organs can slide against one another without friction.
She is essentially trying to understand why a disease like hypertension or obesity harms so many organs, such as the heart, the kidney, the intestines and blood vessels. One commonality is that these organs share the serosa that seems to act as a protective covering yet may be part of what goes wrong in the diseases of hypertension and obesity if it fibroses and doesn't produce the needed liquid.
This hypothesis is only in the discovery phase, but the Watts lab team is working on the grant support to be able to test these ideas. While obtaining research funding has never been easy, Dr. Watts says she is very concerned about the impact of growing misinformation and funding cuts that are currently hurting the scientific community, particularly for young people who are just beginning their path in science.
“People who did grants in the ’60s and ’70s have told me everything they sent in got funded. I have had to fight for everything. Constant re-submissions, just constantly. I've never not known fighting in that way. It's a reality. And it's tiring.
“What's happening right now to NIH (National Institutes of Health), to NSF (National Science Foundation), etc. threatens stability,” she added. “And science must have stability because you build and you build, and science is typically not fast. It's iterative, it goes two steps forward, one step back, and you have a whole line of people all going at different speeds who need to work together to get to a common goal.”
For Dr. Watts, being a professor means teaching, service and research. Her mentors, all along the way, helped her shape her career, and she considers it a privilege to do the same for the trainees who have been in her life. After all, she is most proud of her people.
More than 100 of her “sons and daughters in science” have gone on to work in industry, in academia, in art and more. She bubbles over with excitement when mentioning how one of her grad students will defend her Ph.D. this spring.
“Celebrating her will be one of the happiest things I do,” Dr. Watts said. “If there's such a thing as a legacy, I hope it's that. I hope that people know that they can love science. They can be who they are in it.”
by Lynn Waldsmith