PhD student
University of Pennsylvania
My scientific career began in 2019 when I joined the lab of Faye Mourkioti (UPenn) as a research technician. In this lab, my research focused on identifying a novel mechanosensitive pathway regulating muscle stem cell potency. During the course of this project, I used two-photon microscopy in order to visualize muscle stem cells in their native environment. As a Masters student, I continued my journey as a biological microscopist by joining the lab of Nicolas Plachta (UPenn), where I am utilizing confocal and superresolution microscopy to investigate the mechanisms of embryonic cell division preimplantation mouse embryos. Specifically, I have recently discovered a non-canonical mode of mitosis occurring during the first and second embryonic division. In addition, I have collaborated with other members of the lab and have significantly contributed to their projects, resulting in several coauthored publications. I have also had the opportunity to collaborate with Ken Zaret, a pioneer in the field of mammalian gene regulation. With a graduate student in the Zaret lab, I elucidated a role for the protein ERH in the first embryonic lineage specification. This collaboration resulted in a co-first author publication. A long-term goal of mine is to become an interdisciplinary scientist. Thus, I am building on my strong foundation in cell biology and am currently expanding my expertise in the quantitative field. Specifically, I am developing skills in data science and machine learning. I am routinely training deep learning models of various architectures (primarily convolutional neural networks) to segment images from biological microscopy experiments. These quantitative skills compliment my current work, as deep learning models are becoming essential to extract meaningful features from large microscopy datasets.