I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Toledo and hold an Adjunct Professorship in the Department of Neurology at the University of Michigan. I received my doctorate degree in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007.

I completed my postdoctoral training at Yale University with Dr. Michael Snyder, studying transcriptional regulation. I then applied my expertise in functional genomics to study the molecular mechanisms of autism as a Research Scientist with Dr. James Noonan at the Yale University School of Medicine.

In 2016, I joined the University of Michigan as a Research Faculty member and managed the Human Stem Cell and Gene Editing Core for Michigan Medicine, specializing in disease modeling using human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs).

My work has focused on identifying the molecular and cellular mechanisms essential for human neurodevelopment and neural network formation, and how their function are altered in neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) and developmental and epileptic encephalopathy using hPSC-derived brain organoid models. The long-term goal of my research is to discover novel mechanistic-based therapeutics for various brain disorders such as autism spectrum disorders and epilepsy.

I moved my lab to the University of Toledo (UT) in August 2023. My group at UT will continue to study how the human brain develops and the genetic causes of NDDs using CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, stem cells, and brain organoids.