Personnel

Responsibilities

As a research specialist in the core facility my primary responsibilities are to work with client labs to meet their projects goals, ensure that they receive the best support possible, and to make my technical and scientific expertise available to all our users.

Training and Background

I have over 30 years of experience utilizing cell culture as well as protein expression and purification (PEP) techniques in an academic research environment.   My strongest skill set is with mammalian cell culture protein overexpression systems.

Early in my career I received training in cell culture techniques in the laboratory of Dr. Ronald Schnaar at Johns Hopkins University. I worked on projects that examined various aspects of cell-cell interactions, often requiring the isolation and culture of primary cells.  My experiences there taught me stringent foundations of care in cell culture that I still utilize today.

Before coming to the UNC PEP core I worked in the laboratory of Dr. Daniel Leahy, a structural biologist who also resides at Johns Hopkins. It was there that I developed and honed my protein expression expertise.  I acquired the skills necessary to take a protein expression project from cloning and vector construction, to optimizing an expression system, to purification of protein for crystallography studies. I specialized in mammalian expression systems but also have experience working with insect and bacterial cell expression systems.