A Kansas City native, I am happy to be a Jayhawk/Jaydoc. After graduating from Shawnee Mission East High School in 2000, I went on to pursue a Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. At Wash U, I coupled my technical education with my interests in the humanities, eventually graduating with additional majors in Biology and Spanish, in 2004.
As an undergraduate, I received two Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) fellowships, which allowed me to conduct research on the Medical School campus. I worked in the lab of Brian Hackett, MD, PhD, in the Department of Pediatrics' Developmental Biology Unit, examining the genetic regulation of left/right axis formation and pulmonary epithelial cellular differentiation. I was also able to spend a semester working full-time at an industrial pharmaceutical company, where I assisted process engineers in designing a protein isolation protocol.
I entered the MD/PhD program at KUMC in 2004; completed two years of medical school didactics; and entered Dianne Durham's Auditory and Vestibular Neuroscience laboratory in November 2005. I worked with Dr. Durham for 3+ years, examining the molecular neuroplasticity of sensory-deprived auditory neurons within the chick brainstem. In June 2009, I defended my doctoral dissertation and entered the medical school clinical clerkship track in July. Now approaching my final year, I am formalizing my plans for a career in academic medicine and research. It has been an honor to be a part of this challenging and productive program.
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