Genetic Engineering
Recent Alumnae in Graduate School
Recent graduates have entered Ph.D. programs at Harvard, Duke, Princeton, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Purdue, University of Colorado, University of Connecticut, University of California-San Diego, University of Delaware, Penn State, and Lehigh University. Some examples include:
Renita Polk
Ph.D. Student at Johns Hopkins UniversityI am a grad student in the human genetics program at Johns Hopkins University, and I think the coolest thing about my scientific endeavors is the potential for a project I worked on at a summer internship at the Jackson Labs in Maine to be used in treatments for high cholesterol.
Kristen Rennoll-Bankert
Ph.D. Student in Pathobiology Department at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.The best experiences in my scientific
career have been my two summer internships, one at Penn State College of
Medicine and the other at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. These internships
gave me the chance to interact with graduate students which helped guide me to
where I am today.
Publications: Purdy JG. Flanagan JM. Ropson IJ. Rennoll-Bankert KE. Craven RC.
Critical role of conserved hydrophobic residues within the major homology
region in mature retroviral capsid assembly. 2008 Jun. J Virol. 82(12):5951-61.
Stephanie Nowotarski
Graduate Student in the Peifer Lab at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
How one cell can give rise to a fully
developed human, dog, or fly is a magnificent process. In order for this to
occur there are several requirements: that the cell can divide, communicate,
change shape and coordinate that shape change to other cells through adhesion. Cell
shape change requires the remodeling of the actin cytoskeleton and the work I
do focuses on a regulator of actin: Enabled (Ena). I am carrying out my work using Drosophila melanogaster because there are three
mammalian homologs which complicates matters. We already know that this protein
plays a role in a subset of developmental events and I am currently working on
a protein structure-function study to determine if different domains of Ena are
required for different morphogenetic events.
Alison Hege Harrill
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
STAR Pre-doctoral fellow at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
I've been able to apply my knowledge of genetic engineering gained from
my CCC degree and two years working for the U.S. Army to the development of
better tools that can improve toxicity testing. My dissertation research was to
develop an /in vivo/ mouse model that could enable the detection of genetic
variants that predict whether an individual will have an adverse drug reaction
to a pharmaceutical agent.
I was fortunate to work with both basic scientists and clinicians to validate
the model in both mice and humans. My next career move will be a postdoctoral
position at the new Center for Drug Safety Sciences within the Hamner
Institutes for Health Sciences.
Daneen (Grossman) Schaeffer
Graduate Research Assistant at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
My recent work is on an RNA degradation protein, Rrp44p. When I first started working with this protein we had no idea of its function. Recently, I discovered a novel RNA degradation domain and characterized it's function in vivo and in vitro. The most exciting part is that this work led to my first publication.
Danielle Skinner
Ph.D. graduate student at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences (IBS), George Washington University
I'm currently in my first lab rotation. My research involves the integration of reporter transgenes into Schistosoma mansomi (parasitic helminth) chromosomes by retrovirus-mediated transduction. I have to complete three lab rotations before choosing a permanent lab for my PhD. Most labs I'm interested in are located in the school's tropical medicine department; I'm leaning towards the Microbiology/Immunology tract in the IBS progra
Last Updated: 8/13/10
