Spotlight

Dr. Ferguson completed a BA in Human Genetics at Trinity College Dublin, and a PhD in Nutrigenomics at University College Dublin, Ireland, before moving to Philadelphia for postdoctoral training in Cardiovascular Genomics at the University of Pennsylvania. She moved to Nashville to join the faculty at Vanderbilt in October 2014... Click Dr. Ferguson's photo to continue reading.

Dr. Patrick earned her Master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, and her M.D./Ph.D. from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She's an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Rheumatology at Vanderbilt where her work focuses on identifying and characterizing pathogenic molecular pathways in juvenile idiopathic arthritis and pediatric autoimmune disease.... Click Dr. Patrick's photo to continue reading.

Lillian Brady, Ph.D. and Kirsty Erickson are part of the Erin Calipari Lab at Vanderbilt University in the Department of Pharmacology. Lillian obtained her PhD from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in the Department of Neurobiology. While at UAB, Lillian worked with Dr. Lynn Dobrunz where she studied the role of the dopamine system in the modulation and regulation of inhibitory synaptic transmission and neural circuit function within the hippocampus. Lillian joined Vanderbilt University as an Academic Pathways Postdoctoral Research Fellow in May of 2017 where her research interests include understanding the synaptic physiology, circuit function, and molecular mechanisms that underlie different types of learning behavior. Kirsty graduated from the University of South Dakota in 2016 with a BS in Medical Biology, during which time she studied the role of Ubiquilin-1 in learning and memory. Kirsty came to Vanderbilt in 2017 as a research assistant in the Neul lab, where she investigated the pathogenesis of Rett Syndrome. Now, she joins the Calipari Lab as a graduate student interested in terminal dopamine dynamics that render susceptibility to stimulant use disorder... Click the image on the left to continue reading.

Dr. Dash is a faculty member in the Meharry Medical College Center for AIDS Health Disparities Research (CAHDR) and the Department of Biochemistry, Cancer Biology, Pharmacology and Neuroscience. His research focuses on understanding the mechanisms of HIV-1 infection and probing the effects of drugs of abuse on HIV pathogenesis.

Dr. Alexander earned his undergraduate degree from Duke University and his M.D./Ph.D. from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. He's an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Molecular Physiology & Biophysics at Vanderbilt researching the role of adaptive immunity in the pathogenesis of hypertension and associated cardiovascular disease... Click Dr. Alexander's photo to continue reading.

Dr. Newcomb earned her undergraduate degree from North Carolina State University in 2002 and her Ph.D. from University of Michigan in 2007. She trained as a post-doctoral fellow in Dr. R. Stokes Peebles, Jr. M.D. laboratory at Vanderbilt University focusing on lung inflammation, viral infections, and T cell immune responses. In 2014, Dr. Newcomb started her laboratory at Vanderbilt to study how sex hormones regulate mechanisms of airway inflammation in asthma. Dr. Newcomb currently has 2 R01s to study these mechanisms...... Click Dr. Newcomb's photo to continue reading.

Wenhan Zhu received his Ph.D. at Purdue University in Biological Sciences and is an Assistant Professor in Pathology, Microbiology, and Immunology. In his lab, they focus on the metabolic interactions that dictate the changes or resilience of the microbiota. Insight into such interactions could enable precise manipulation of gut microbiota composition, thus restoring a balanced community in situ and improving host health. To precisely manipulate the microbiota, they use a multidisciplinary discovery pipeline that consists of next-generation sequencing, bacterial genetics and a mechanistic understanding of bacterial physiology in vivo. This pipeline allows them to discover druggable targets of the microbiota and translate the findings using high-throughput screening.... Click Dr. Zhu's photo to continue reading.

Brian Bachmann received his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 2000 and is a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry. He is the Principal Investigator of the Laboratory for Biosynthetic Studies, a multidisciplinary group working on the construction and deconstruction of biosynthetic pathways and the discovery of their products. The broad goals of this group are to investigate how natural product biosynthetic enzymes evolve and to understand the design rules for their concatenation into efficient “total syntheses” of natural products... Click Dr. Bachmann's photo to continue reading.

Maureen Gannon grew up in Queens, New York. She received her B.S. in Biology from Molloy College in Rockville Centre, NY and her M.S. in Biology from Adelphi University in Garden City, NY. She received her Ph.D. in Cell Biology and Anatomy from Cornell University. Her thesis project, conducted in the lab of Dr. David Bader, examined cardiac organogenesis and the formation of the chambers of the heart in the developing embryo. Dr. Gannon pursued her postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Chris Wright at Vanderbilt University, where she studied genes that regulate embryonic pancreas development and expression of the insulin gene... Click Dr. Gannon's photo to continue reading.

Steven D. Townsend is an Assistant Professor of Organic Chemistry at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Townsend is an expert in the chemical synthesis of biologically important molecules. A major topic of interest for his lab is the synthesis of homogeneous human milk oligosaccharides and related constructs to investigate their use as prebiotics in infant formula. He has numerous publications in premier international journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA), Angewandte Chemie International Edition and Journal of the American Chemical Society. Before being appointed to Vanderbilt in 2014, Townsend earned his PhD at Vanderbilt and then completed a postdoctoral research fellowship with Samuel J. Danishefsky at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Columbia University... Click Dr. Townsend's photo to continue reading.