What led you to pursue a career in research?

I was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and I am a first-generation college student. I remember being curious at a young age, playing outside and looking closely at the grass and the woods. One anecdote I always remember is that before biology class in high school, a classmate found a recently deceased wasp that had flown into the classroom. We then spent a few minutes dissecting it, and when we put the stinger under the microscope, we saw the poison still flowing through the sac and stinger. I didn’t know it at the time, but since then I’ve had a fascination with looking at cells through the microscope, but I still didn’t really know what research was. At Belmont University as an undergraduate, I studied learning in zebrafish for an undergraduate thesis, and I myself learned how fun it is to ask and answer questions scientifically, which has sent me down this path of hypothesis-driven, curiosity-driven, basic science research career. After my undergraduate degree, I studied ocular dominance plasticity and amblyopia at MIT, and I got my PhD at Arizona State University studying how the auditory brainstem processes sounds by integrating non-auditory information with incoming auditory signals.

What is the focus of your work?

A11 dopamine neurons are the only source of dopamine for the spinal cord, but many of the basic mechanisms and physiological characteristics of these neurons are still not known. Under the mentorship of Dr. Stephanie Gantz, we will use patch-clamp electrophysiology to study the synaptic properties of inputs onto A11 dopamine neurons, and how these synaptic inputs interact with ion channels present on the cell to guide action potential firing. I am looking forward to learning other electrophysiological techniques under her mentorship to study these neurons at multiple levels of scale to understand how these neurons change in response to pain, and then influence pain modulation.

What excites you about the research environment in Molecular Physiology and Biophysics?

When I came for my interview, I was blown away by the depth of expertise in Physiology among the faculty. Not only that, but everyone I have met so far has been incredibly kind, and the entire department is supportive and welcoming. The people here make me excited to have a home in this department.

How do you hope your research will impact the field and the broader community?

Chronic pain is a debilitating issue for so many people. If the work I do here could lead to translational research down the line that helps people with different types of chronic pain such as arthritis or migraines, that would be incredibly meaningful. Being a first-generation student, I also hope to be an example for others first generation students and hope to be a mentor for young scientists making their way through their careers.