Our Alumni Beyond The PhD
Where I Am Now Heading link
After graduating from the GPN, I joined the Mizumori lab at the University of Washington as a post-doctoral fellow. While pursing my research interests, I realized that for my independent career, I wanted to incorporate the passion I had for teaching and mentoring, developed at UIC, with my research program. To position myself for a job at a liberal arts school that took research seriously, I combined teaching as an Adjunct Professor with my post-doctoral studies. I am now a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Seattle Pacific University. Here I feel I have the best of both worlds with about equal effort devoted to teaching and research.
Since graduating from the GPN program in 2017, I have been working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania (Perelman School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry). My time in GPN provided me with a fundamental understanding of neuroscience as well as highly focused training within my chosen field. I continue to apply the knowledge and skills acquired during my graduate school training as I develop an independent research program aimed at understanding the neural control of feeding behavior and body weight regulation.
After graduating the GPN in 2013, I took a postdoctoral position at Tulane University in New Orleans. My projects involved examining physiological responses to stress in human subjects. During this time I gained experience working with BioTek plate readers, liquid handlers, and software. After my post doc, I took a job as a technical field sales representative with BioTek Instruments. I have been with BioTek for 5 years now and my favorite part of the job is using my scientific background to help my customers with their research projects. I get to work with a wide range of labs from Biochemistry to Immunology to Molecular Biology to Oncology to Neuroscience (and more)!
Since graduating from the GPN program in 2018, I have been working at William Blair, an investment bank, as a biotech equity research analyst, where I have conducted scientific and financial diligence of preclinical and clinical biotech companies. In my current role, I routinely have to analyze scientific literature, ask critical clarifying questions, evaluate others experimental design, and succinctly summarize my conclusions (investment thesis) to others, skills which were empathized and sharpened during my time in the GPN.
Since graduating from the GPN in 2018, I have been working as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Northwestern (2018-2021 with Dr. John A Kessler) where I investigated the impact of bone morphogenetic protein signaling on neurogenesis in aging (Bonds et al 2023 eNeuro). In 2021, I returned to UC San Diego as a part of the San Diego Institutional Research and Career Development Award (IRACDA) program to further my Postdoctoral training, as well as receive pedagogical training to teach effectively at the University level. I have worked with Dr. Brian Head on the gene therapy the lab had developed to treat Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis which has received orphan drug approval from the FDA and will be entering human clinical trials in 2025 . I have also worked on projects with Dr. Hemal Patel at UC San Diego studying the physiological impact of meditation (Zuniga-Hertz et al 2023 Brain Behav Immun Health). My independent research is now focused on investigating mitochondrial dynamics in determining neural stem cell fate with particular emphasis on oligodendrogenesis in Multiple Sclerosis. I will pursue this project in collaboration with UC San Diego as a Tenure Track Assistant Professor at the University of San Diego (USD) in the Fall of 2025. In addition to my research, I will be a founding member of the newly minted Department of Neuroscience, Cognition, and Behavior at USD. I am extremely excited for the opportunity to incorporate teaching into my research career and cannot wait to see what the data reveals!