I’m currently a PhD candidate in the program in interdisciplinary materials science at Vanderbilt University. I work in the Vanderbilt University medical center in the department of pharmacology, advised by Qi Zhang.
After earning an engineering degree, working in Peru as an anthropologist, and research rotations in nanoparticle chemistry, I became interested in neuroscience during collaborations that were part of my Master’s work in engineering. Rather than continuing to split time via collaboration, I chose to move full-time into a neuroscience lab that focused heavily on optical methods.
I’ve since been working on both understanding the effects of reduced dimensional materials on cell signaling and developing optical tools to probe synaptic transmission at high spatio-temporal resolution. Ultimately, I am interested in how synaptic signaling is integrated and interpreted, from nanocircuits to large scale behavioral outputs. This will benefit greatly from continuing methodological advances.
News
March 2016 – Spent a great few days at the HHMI Janelia research campus as part of the junior scientist workshop on protein engineering. Was excited to share our more of our qdot work and talk in vivo imaging . Also toured the advanced imaging core, had so much fun seeing the lattice light sheet!
December 2015 – Starting to prep for spring engineering courses! I’m part of a new pilot program at Vanderbilt where I’ll be guest lecturing some of my old undergraduate MechE courses. Better dust off that systems dynamics text, time to practice my Laplace transforms.
October 2015 – I presented our graphene interaction work at a symposia on Engineering the Brain and then our quantum dot work as a dynamic poster at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting.
February 2015 – My first trip to Baltimore for my first biophysical society meeting included my first talk: “Regulation of lipid membrane trafficking and transmembrane signaling by graphene.” After my talk, I was off to Washington to visit the Speaker’s office on a chilly day. Thanks to my friends in Boehnerland for letting me check out the sweet view!