I am a Postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Irfan Saadi’s laboratory at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) in the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology. I am also a member of the Institute for Reproductive and Developmental Sciences (IRDS). My ultimate goal is to enter a career in translational research. My postdoctoral project investigates the mechanisms by which nutrient changes in the maternal environment rescue cleft palate (CP). This finding was serendipitously uncovered during my doctoral training, where I identified a genetic interaction between cytoskeletal SPECC1L and THM1 (funded NIH F31). During the first year of my postdocotral position, I received three fellowships (Biomedical Research Training Program-KUMC, K-INRE Postdocotral Fellowship- NIH, TL1 Postdoctroal Fellowship-NIH CTSA).

When I began graduate school, my idea of success included the goal of impacting one person with my work. I am happy to report that beyond my research endeavors, I was able to establish a partnership between KUMC and my undergraduate institution Rockhurst University (RU) to provide research experiences to RU undergraduates. The idea for this partnership blossomed out of the broader impacts section of my successfully funded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP), which I obtained as an undergraduate. To date 55 undergraduates have received research opportunities at the KUMC in a variety of subjects spanning Alzheimer’s Disease, birth defects, obesity, cancer, Polycystic Kidney Disease, autophagy, DNA repair, COVID, ovarian aging, ciliogenesis, and O-GlcNAc biology.

Due to this work I received two awards as a gradaute student, 2023 Dorothy Knoll Outstanding Student Leadership Award (KUMC) and 2023 Student Achiever STEMMy award (Central Exchange). Beyond my research and outreach, I have learned to teach cadaver anatomy and am now an instructor for first- and second-year medical students at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

"Science: If you don't make mistakes, you're doing it wrong. If you don't correct those mistakes you're doing it really wrong. If you can't accept that you're mistaken, you're not doing it at all." -Anon