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Assistant Professor
University of Texas at Dallas
I am professionally trained as PhD molecular biologist, however, because of my diverse training I view biological problems through many lenses. This stems from my undergraduate training at MIT. I began my scientific career studying the structure and function of monomeric ribonucleotide reductases in the laboratory of Prof. Catherine Drennan. For my Ph.D. in the group of Prof. Graham Walker at MIT, I leveraged my knowledge of bacterial metabolism to develop a new method that opened the field of Rhizobia cell cycle research and gained valuable training in microbial transcriptomics, molecular microbiology and computational biology. I changed fields for my postdoctoral work and joined the group of biochemist Prof. Kim Orth at UTSW to study how secreted bacterial effectors modulate host cell signaling where I gained significant experience in protein biochemistry, cell biology and human transcriptomics and initiated the work that is now the focus of my independent research program. During my postdoctoral fellowship I built collaborations with microbiologist Dr. Kelli Palmer, bioinformatician Dr. Chao Xing and urologist Dr. Philippe. Zimmern that I currently maintain as an independent investigator.
I started my lab in the department of Biological Sciences at UT Dallas in October 2018, and I am currently mentoring a vibrant group of young scientists. Research goals of my lab include 1) analysis of the composition and function of the urinary microbiome in relation to rUTI, 2) to identify virulence mechanisms employed by clinically isolated uropathogens and 3) to understand how host inflammation contributes to rUTI and modulates the urinary microbiome. The ultimate goal of my lab’s research is to identify both microbial and host molecules that can be targeted to develop more effective prophylaxes and therapeutics for rUTI.
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Friday, May 13, 2022
7:00 AM – 8:15 AM