I began my academic career with a B.A. in Biology from Washington University in St. Louis. This is where I first became interested in research and while working in Dr. Kristen Kroll's laboratory at the Wash U School of Medicine using Xenopus laevis as a model organism, I discovered my passion for developmental biology.
After earning my undergraduate degree, I joined the laboratory of Dr. David Gottlieb at the Wash U School of Medicine in the Anatomy and Neurobiology Department as a research technician. Under his guidance and mentorship, I honed my skills in molecular biology and published my first paper of which I was the primary author. I also became enamored by how gene regulation pertained to the development of an organism. I asked many questions about how complex tissues and organs with highly dissimilar functions could all have essentially the same DNA and convinced myself that I could address those questions in graduate school.
I pursued these interests starting in the PIBS program at the University of Michigan (my first stop in Ann Arbor!) where I joined the laboratory of Dr. Scott Barolo. Under Scott's mentorship I was engulfed in tissue specific gene regulation with a focus on the transcriptional control of Hedgehog (Hh) target genes in Drosophila melanogaster. My thesis work demonstrated how an ancient cis-regulatory architecture controls Patched, a critical target gene and integral member of the Hh signaling pathway.
In addition to the science, I also mentored many undergraduate students while in the Barolo lab, and this mentoring turned into a passion that culminated in an exciting training program I co-founded called Developing Future Biologists. In this program, I was part of a group of five graduate students who created a short course focusing on Developmental Biology and taught it at the University of Puerto Rico at Ponce. Few students who participated in the course had Developmental Biology laboratory courses available on their college campus and this program brought a course to them and has since expanded to include sessions at the University of Michigan for local schools without these same kinds of laboratories or courses.
After earning my PhD from the Program in Cellular and Molecular Biology at UM, I continued my training as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Lori Sussel at the Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes, which is part of the University of Colorado Denver Anschutz Medical Campus. Lori has dedicated much of her career to defining the transcriptional mechanisms by which the endocrine cells of the pancreas develop and how dysfunction of these cells can lead to diabetes. Her expertise gave me the opportunity to focus my passion for gene regulation more specifically on pancreas development and diabetes while also broadening my knowledge base with new model systems involving mice, human pluripotent stem cells, and organoid culture. Our scientific interests in gene regulation during development were well aligned making my postdoc an exciting and productive experience. I was awarded an American Diabetes Association postdoctoral fellowship to study the role of retinoic acid signaling in pancreas development, function and diabetes (2017-2021) and a K99/R00 transition award to explore the novel intersection of RA signaling and GATA transcription factors in the pancreatic islet (2021-present).
Each stage of my training has provided a novel contribution to my expertise and interests which has culminated in my appointment to assistant professor here at the University of Michigan. I am thrilled to be a faculty member in the Pharmacology Department with membership in the Elizabeth Weiser Caswell Diabetes Institute. My research continues to focus on how cell signaling pathways are used repeatedly throughout development and in adult function via different transcriptional targets that are critical to making a healthy organ. Learning from how these developmental mechanisms normally proceed will provide critical insights into how to better treat cellular dysfunction in disease. Read more about a handful of specific projects here!