Education

Postdoctoral Fellow – University of California at Davis, Davis, CA. Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Ph.D.  – Cellular Biology. Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO. Department of Cell and Developmental Biology.

B.S.  – Biology. University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA.

Teaching

• BIOL 1B Information and Evolution (Lecture and lab)
• BIOL 114AW Advanced Topics in Cell Biology
• BIOL174:Cell Biology (Lecture and Lab)
• BIOL 191 Project Laboratory

Research

Research in my lab focuses on better understanding how motile cilia structure affects its function. Motile cilia are tiny, hair-like, appendages that extend off of cells in your body to move extracellular fluid rapidly. Failure of motile cilia to move extracellular fluid faithfully results in severe human maladies like hydrocephaly, childhood epilepsy, respiratory distress, and both male and female infertility. Motile cilia are composed of stable populations of microtubules called doublet microtubules. There is a large subset of proteins that localize on the inside of these microtubules that we hypothesize are responsible for the fidelity of ciliary beating. We employ both molecular and cell biological techniques to probe these microtubule inner proteins that make up the core of a motile cilium and investigate their contributions to motile cilia movement using Tetrahymena thermophila as a model organism.Our hope is to better understand this amazing molecular machine so we can further understand the complex disorders that arise from motile cilia dysfunction.