About Me

Goals

I am an aspiring infectious disease researcher. I hope to study the way pathogens are able to evade the human immune system.

Education

I am a current Biomedical Sciences: Medical Microbiology senior at the University of New Hampshire.

Experience

I have been an undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Stephen Jones’ lab since the spring of 2023. In this position I have gained experience in collecting field samples, PCR, gel electrophoresis, qPCR, and data organization and analysis.

This summer I spent 10 weeks in Dr. Andrew Badley’s lab at the Mayo Clinic. My project was focused on the potential ability of the protein TRAILshort, a splice variant of the protein TRAIL, to inhibit T cell activation and downstream signaling. I was able to isolate primary T cells from donor apheresis blood and treat with TRAILshort or a negative control scrambled peptide. The cells were then stimulated and stained intracellulary for interferon gamma or pZAP70 and analyzed via flow cytometry.

I was also able to assist in setting up cell vaibility assays with different cancer cell lines to test the effectiveness of T cells treated with TRAILshort in killing them.

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