- I grew up outside of Cooperstown New York, which many people know as the home of Baseball. I have been to the National Baseball Hall of Fame almost a dozen times, but I do not like baseball. I did foster a love of horses and would spend hours at the barn after school and on weekends! I had two horses growing up: a quarter horse, Regent Star and a thoroughbred draft cross, Montana Sky.
- My grandfather was a florist on Long Island and had three greenhouses in the backyard where he would grow poinsettias and other plants for hotels in New York City. Although I never met my grandfather, my mom and her siblings are all avid gardeners. During high school I was interested in horticulture and garden design. Now I just enjoy taking care of the flower gardens in my backyard.
- In high school, I was in the New Visions program at Bassett Hospital. I had the opportunity to shadow doctors, PAs, nurses and techs in most of the departments at the hospital. I really enjoyed the OR and I would always ask if there were any surgeries I could observe. I usually spent one day a week in the OR and was able to see open heart surgery and the delivery of a baby!
- I went to undergrad at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, which is one of the original Seven Sisters and is still an all-women’s college. While there I was a three-season athlete. I ran cross country, indoor and outdoor track. It’s a D3 school and I was not very fast, but I did enjoy being on a team and I was even captain of the D squad. By senior year, I had some running related injuries and decided to try out for the Volleyball team. I had a lot of fun being a practice player and seeing the occasional minute of court time in games.
- I began cell biology research the summer after my first year of undergrad in the lab of Dr. Omar Quintero-Carmona. For my first day in lab, Dr. Quintero invited me to make a movie… I thought he was referring to a movie of cells taken with a microscope… It was in fact a science parody music video . My experience working in research labs at Mount Holyoke, Hershey Medical Center and UMass Amherst solidified my passion for scientific inquiry and I decided to go to graduate school!
- After graduating from Mount Holyoke, I taught cell bio lab and was a research tech for a semester, and then I began my Fulbright Research Fellowship in Barcelona, Spain at the Center for Genomic Regulation right on the beach in BCN! I love to travel and it was amazing to spend a year in Europe.
- Graduate school was fun but rough. My first project was a flop, my second project took three years to get the first piece of data that showed proof of principle and for my third project, I tried for six years to obtain crystals of what turned out to be a highly flexible domain. To cope with the stress and slow progress, I took up yoga and even completed a 200-hour yoga teaching course at Franklin Street Yoga in Chapel Hill!
- Last summer we adopted an adorable puppy from Out of the Pitts. Winston is mix of blue heeler, beagle, pit and some other breeds. He is now one and a half and enjoys laying outside in the sun and playing fetch!
- I have been fortunate to be able to work with amazing PIs, collaborators, collogues, trainees and students. During my postdoc, I spent two weeks in the lab of Nobel Laureate Eric Betzig at Janella Research Campus. Eric is known to swear when he is excited about something. I will never forget when he told me and my colleague that our data set was “f***ing awesome.” I enjoy my time at the Marine Biological Laboratories (MBL) every summer. I began going to the MBL as a teaching assistant for the analytical and quantitative light microscopy course. I then took and worked as a TA for the embryology course. Now I teach in an advanced microscopy course and research there with my students and collaborators!
- I can’t make it through the day without multiple cups of coffee! You will often see me with my Dunkin' iced coffee, and I have two coffee machines in my office!
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