April completed her Ph.D. thesis under the guidance of Professor Stephanie Fraley.

Thesis title: "Development of a Novel Assay for Molecular Detection and Quantification of Bacteria Directly in Whole Human Blood."  

I came in as a Master's student eager to transition into the PhD program. I reached out to Dr. Fraley about her lab's research the summer before I came to UCSD, and along with agreeing to take me in, has been supportive of my research efforts since then. The beginning of my research was met with a lot of frustration and troubleshooting in trying to perfect assay chemistry, but Dr. Fraley was willing to brainstorm new things to try, and eventually I was able to overcome the challenges I faced when first starting to work with a new technology. As I grew as a researcher, Dr. Fraley was supportive of more and more of my ideas, while still having great ideas and thoughts during our weekly meetings that would help me reframe the problem, or approach it from a different perspective. It's been 6 years, but I'm very fortunate to have the autonomy and mentored guidance that I did during my PhD, and I'm glad that I can continue to use these lessons for the rest of my career.