Biography
A Minnesota native, I graduated from the University of Minnesota’s College of Biological
Sciences with a BS in Ecology, Evolution, and Animal Behavior. While completing my
degree, I worked as a student technician in Dr. Lee Wattenberg’s laboratory studying
chemoprevention of lung and GI cancers, as well as aerosol drug delivery in lung
cancer. Upon graduation, I did a brief stint in the clinical veterinary setting before
returning to research at WuXi Apptec where I worked on GLP/GMP preclinical models
for medical device and biopharma products. I eventually returned to the University of
Minnesota, where I currently support Drs. Julia Davydova, Masato Yamamoto, and
Cristopher LaRocca in their work on oncolytic adenoviruses.

Role in the lab
I support three lab groups, including Dr. Davydova, as both researcher and lab
coordinator. I work on everything from purchasing and administrative duties to clinical
trial data generation and analysis. I maintain our general virus stocks, purifying multiple
oncolytic virus batches each year, including optical density and biological titers. I also
manage our patient derived xenograft work, collecting pancreatic ductal
adenocarcinoma samples from the University of Minnesota Medical Center, implanting
the tumors in vivo, and banking them for future use.