I am an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at University of Toledo, also an adjunct professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Michigan. I received her doctorate in cell and molecular biology from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007. I did my postdoctoral training at Yale University with Michael Snyder and studied transcriptional regulation. Following my postdoctoral training, I applied my expertise in functional genomics to study molecular mechanisms of autism as a research scientist in the group of James Noonan at the Yale University School of Medicine. I joined University of Michigan as a research faculty member in 2016. I also manageD the Human Stem Cell and Gene Editing Core for Michigan Medicine that specializes in disease modeling using human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). My work has focused on identifying the molecular and cellular mechanisms that are important for human neurodevelopment and neural network formation, and how they 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 to University of Toledo (UM) in August 2023, and my lab at UT will continue to study how human brain develops and genetic causes of NDDs using CRISPR/CAS9 gene editing, stem cells, and brain organoids.
