Aylin Marz

Brief Biography

Dr. Aylin Marz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Norfolk State University. She got her B.Sc. in Biological Sciences (with Honors) with an option in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1991. She then went on to teach high school science and biology in Cyprus, after which she got her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX in 2001. Dr. Marz did her postdoctoral fellowship at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, CA working on breast cancer cell biology until 2007 when she joined the Radiation Oncology department at Virginia Commonwealth University as an Assistant Professor. From 2013 to 2016, she did adjunct teaching at multiple area colleges and universities until she joined Norfolk State University in 2016.

Dr. Marz’s research interests are breast cancer modeling, progression, and biomarkers. In her research she uses human breast cancer cell lines and tissues, as well as the model system budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to better understand the mechanisms relating DNA repair and cell invasiveness. She has received funding from the DoD Breast Cancer Research Program, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health as well as local and state funding sources.