University: Dallas Baptist University
Hometown: Malakoff, TX
NIH Research Project:
The Role of BLM Helicase in Response to Replication Inhibition by Aphidicolin
Mentor: Mirit Aladjem, Ph.D.
Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology
National Cancer Institute
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Life is about asking questions. As I went through my undergraduate program in biology at Dallas Baptist University, I often found myself asking questions about what direction I would take in life. Spending a summer undertaking research at the University of Arizona, under Dr. Qin Chen, helped me realize that the exciting questions to be answered are in science.
They say graduate school teaches you how to ask the right questions, but in my experience, being a part of the UGSP here at the NIH and training under Dr. Mirit Aladjem in the National Cancer Institute, has given me an opportunity to learn how to ask the interesting questions.
Science has spent the last 50 years building a strong knowledge base in cell biology and, in particular, genetics. I believe the tide is now turning in which this knowledge can be utilized to answer the questions of disease and pathogenesis, which in turn can lead to novel treatments of these diseases and disorders. I plan on being at the forefront of this wave by preparing myself through a graduate education.
Currently, I am working on the elucidation of the mechanisms of DNA damage repair in replication factories due to cell perturbations. This is an excellent training exercise that not only allows me to answer an interesting question, but it also gives me a model by which a question of relevance to disease, in this case cancer, can be answered.
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