Research Scientist

I am a Research Scientist at IHMC and a Health Science Research Specialist at the Birmingham VA Health Care System. I am very interested in how exercise can be implemented to improve the health and quality of life of individuals across disease states and the lifespan. Our group uses multiomic profiling to find novel molecular mechanisms and phenotypes that help guide individualized exercise prescriptions or more precise rehabilitation strategies. Spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s disease and aging are a few of my main research interests. I also maintain an active pre-clinical line of research focused on muscle biology following spinal cord injury, predominantly focused on the role of connexin hemichannels in accelerating muscle dysfunction. Our collaborative team of talented interdisciplinary scientists is spread across many labs throughout the country and we are always looking to extend collaborations.

I received my BA in Spanish from The Ohio State University in 2007 and my MS and PhD from the University of Kansas in 2010 and 2014. respectively. I completed my postdoctoral training in muscle physiology from 2014-2018 at the National Center for the Medical Consequences of Spinal Cord Injury at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx, NY, after which I joined the Birmingham VAHCS. I joined IHMC in 2021.