When I entered graduate school at the University of Arizona in 2012, I began studying how risk for complex disease is influenced by genetics, environment, and development. I became fascinated as I learned that exposures to diverse microorganisms in early life, especially within the first year, greatly influence risk for complex diseases, like asthma. Why was the environment so important? And why was the first year of life so critical to disease pathogenesis? I hoped to find a dissertation project that would allow me to investigate these questions on a deeper level.
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One of the reasons I sought Dr. Donata Vercelli as my mentor was not only her expertise in the asthma and allergy fields, but the way in which she incorporated a diverse set of analytical tools and experimental models to understand gene-environment interactions in different developmental contexts and their impact on asthma pathogenesis. While I was interested by all the projects in the Vercelli lab, I felt drawn to a project that was studying epigenetic modifications (which are involved at the mechanistic intersection of genetics, environment, and development) to understand whether immune cells from at birth could tell us anything about the development of asthma during childhood. This project provided the perfect opportunity for me to begin studying the early origins of disease and I immediately recognized the potential of the study design, which involved data and samples from the Infant Immune Study (IIS) birth cohort, a population-based study at the Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center. Using this human birth cohort as our anchor, my colleagues and I began to address a critical set of unanswered questions: does the trajectory to asthma begin at birth and, if so, does this trajectory involve epigenetic mechanisms? Long story short, we showed for the first time that children who became asthmatic during the first decade of life already had an altered immune epigenome at birth! This suggested to us that prenatal factors may have ultimately led to asthma and provided a rationale to hypothesize whether the trajectory to asthma begins even earlier, that is, in utero. Separate work from the IIS cohort supported this hypothesis, showing that the mother’s immune environment during pregnancy was associated with asthma in her child.

Fast forward a few years, I’m now a post-doctoral research associate, still working in the Vercelli lab. I became involved in several other projects, all of which are linked to different environments and their impact on asthma inception. My main project, however, was designed as a continuation of my dissertation work. Once again, my colleagues and I leveraged data from the IIS birth cohort and relied on a novel mother-to-child framework to show that the maternal prenatal immune environment shapes the neonatal immune epigenome as well as neonatal innate immune responses to microbial stimuli, all of which relates to asthma risk (PMID: 35841380). More importantly, we discovered that the neonates with the lowest risk for asthma had higher innate immune responses to microbial stimuli, which is indicative of innate immune memory or “trained immunity.” I am eager to start a new line of investigation to begin understanding how microbial exposures during pregnancy influence innate immune memory at birth and to determine the impact on innate immune responses to microbes over the first year of life.
 
My training is in cellular and molecular biology with an emphasis in bioinformatics. I use computational approaches to analyze different omics technologies from distinct, yet integrated, experimental models to gain insights into how environmental and developmental factors influence asthma pathogenesis. If you’d like to hear more about my research, feel free to email me at africker@arizona.edu. 

Dr. Avery Ann DeVries was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Development Grant (PRDG) from the University of Arizona for a project titled “Environmental Influences on Innate Immune Response and its Role in Childhood Asthma”​​.

​Scientific research is an important aspect of my life. Thanks to Science, humans learned so much about Nature and improved their lives. However, there is a downside given that many discoveries were used inappropriately. Remember, for instance, about nuclear weapons and exposure to leaded gasoline. Irresponsible human activities have led to accelerating climate change, heavy metal pollution in soil, and microplastic in our food. We have only one planet and we need to protect our Earth for ourselves and for the benefit of our children.
 
My name is Filip and I have a peculiar surname, Pošćić (I bet you can't pronounce it correctly). Those strange symbols are not simple accents but diacritical marks making different letters from “s” and “c” in the Croatian alphabet, and with no equivalent sounds in English. I would write an approximate pronunciation as “Poshtjitj” or [Poʃtɕitɕ] (according to the International Phonetic Alphabet). The letter š is pronounced similarly to “sh” in “shell”, and ć as if you would pronounce “y” in “yellow” by holding your mouth as to say “t” in “tap”. It’s complicated, I know, and I am fine if you will write “Poscic”.
 
As a child, my father gave me a book about Nature as a gift. I was a little small to fully understand that book at the time, but I enjoyed looking at the figures and I fell in love with the amazing beauty of natural landscapes and the biological variation. I soon decided to work in and for Nature. At that age I didn’t fully understand what does it means to work “in and for” Nature but I guess I accomplished my dream: I am a UofA post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Alicja Babst-Kostecka, in the Environmental Science (https://environmentalscience.cals.arizona.edu/) doing my best to 1) educate people to preserve nature and reduce pollution and 2) studying the amazing metal hyperaccumulator plants that can clean the soils from heavy metals. I will now write a few more words about hyperaccumulators.
 
Metal hyperaccumulator plants are only approximately 0.3% of the total plant species in the world and they can accumulate extraordinarily high concentrations of one, two, or three specific heavy metals in their leaves. To name a few of these outstanding species: Arabidopsis halleri, hyperaccumulating both zinc and cadmium; Biscutella laevigata, hyperaccumulating thallium; and Noccaea caerulescens, hyperaccumulating zinc, cadmium, and nickel. The listed metals, often commonly but erroneously called heavy metals, are present in large quantities in mining and surrounding areas making a toxic environment to other living beings, including humans. The amazing feature of hyperaccumulators is we could use these plants for cleaning up metal-contaminated soils that are unsafe for human life and agriculture. However, there is a problem: these plants are very small and, therefore, to effectively clean the soils you would need biomass plants, like the perennial switchgrass. As such, switchgrass is not a hyperaccumulator, but research is focused on understanding the metabolic pathways of hyperaccumulators and properly modifying biomass plants. The icing on the cake, biomass plants could be converted to biogas and metals could be extracted from residues gaining additional money (this is phytomining!).
 
As you could understand from reading so far, I am really into the physiology and ecology of plants, and I do not skip genetics and evolution! I studied at the University of Trieste (Italy) where I obtained my master’s degree in 2007 on nucleotide diversity in coding and regulatory genomic regions of maize. After a research project on metal tolerance and ecological characterization of Biscutella laevigata populations, I obtained the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Ecology in 2012 at the University of Udine (Italy) with a short stay (6 months) at the Free University Amsterdam (The Netherlands). From 2012 to 2016, I worked at the University of Udine and was awarded financial support for young scientists in 2013 for research on cerium toxicity in plants. From 2016 to 2019, I went back to my home country and worked at the Institute for Adriatic Crops and Karst Reclamation in Split (Croatia) and at Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb (Croatia) on soil-plant interactions and nutrient deficiencies, and trace element toxicity in olive trees. I was also honored in 2019 by receiving the most prestigious and competitive European fellowship, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual fellowship in Prof. Dr. Ute Krämer Department of Molecular Genetics and Physiology of Plants at the Ruhr University Bochum (Germany). Have a look at my former research https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/845234 where I was investigating the variability in hyperaccumulation of zinc and cadmium between individuals of the same Arabidopsis halleri population.
 
At the beginning of January 2022, I finally started working at the University of Arizona, and currently, my research is focused on plant adaptations to soils with high metals as well as collaborative projects on physiology and ecology. We are a young lab growing very fast and we like to collaborate with you! I am also particularly thirsty for knowledge in biostatistics. I developed early my wish to learn more about applied statistics because I found very often scientific publications with statistics misconceptions that lead to wrong conclusions! Research has always been at the heart of the development of human society. Every fundamental step for humans started from a little research, from a little idea. Every single datum obtained by researchers is necessary for the future to gain knowledge. If data are wrongly analyzed or interpreted this can be a recipe for a disaster.
 
If you would like to know more on how plants can clean toxic soils or discuss any of the above topics do not hesitate to contact me by email (fposcic@arizona.com), Twitter (@FilipPoscic), or Instagram (linkedin.com/in/filipposcic).

​Don’t be fooled by the intricately woven stories we academics tell linking everything we’ve ever done and produced together…the road through academia, for many, dare I say most, of us, is not linear. My research training and interests over time are a prime example. The truth is, sometimes, we have to be sponges and sit in a topic or field for some time to get a sense of whether or not this is where we want to be. While changing directions is often looked at as a bad thing, it can actually offer quite a few benefits, including having a diverse set of skills (usually some germane and some that are quite transferable) and having the opportunity to build cross-disciplinary collaborations. Is it just me, or do we never talk about the perks of transitioning fields of study? The good news, though, is that with each pivot we make, we usually get one step closer to zeroing in on the direction we wish to go, whether that’s in academia or industry. Since entering academia in 2016, despite the swivels and turns and loop de loops, I feel like I am finally in the research field I am meant to be in (6 years later, mind you).

My name is Kristin Morrill and I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Community & Systems Health Science Division of the University of Arizona’s College of Nursing. As a health disparities and health services researcher, the long-term goal of my research is to improve oncology care for the underserved. This passion is largely driven by my experiences as a Cuban American woman and my understanding of some of the barriers faced by women, like my grandmother, while navigating the healthcare system. Currently, my research focuses on two specific time intervals along the cancer care continuum: 1) the time in days between the first clinical presentation of cancer to diagnosis (referred to as diagnostic delay) and 2) the time in days between a diagnosis and initiation of treatment (referred to as treatment delay). My research has largely been focused on breast cancer given breast cancer remains the deadliest cancer for Hispanic women in the U.S. comprising 14% of all cancer deaths. Consistently, it has been demonstrated that Hispanic women diagnosed with breast cancer experience longer diagnostic and treatment delay compared to other subpopulations, and the detrimental effects of these delays range from increased psychological distress (anxiety and depression) to enlargement of the tumor and poorer overall prognosis. Put succinctly, ensuring timely diagnosis and treatment are critical to improving cancer outcomes among Hispanic women diagnosed with breast cancer. To develop interventions and policies to reduce these delays; however, more data regarding reasons for these delays and who is at greater risk of experiencing them is needed. To this end, my ongoing research includes the following: 1) evaluating factors (including race and ethnicity) associated with treatment delay among patients with five common cancers (including breast cancer); 2) describing overall trends for breast cancer diagnostic and treatment delay in a nationally representative sample of US Medicare beneficiaries and examining trends by racial and ethnic subpopulation and geographic location; and 3) exploring the experiences of Hispanic cancer patients through the diagnosis and treatment process and the factors influencing decisions on where and when to be diagnosed and treated. Together, findings from this research will provide a holistic understanding of how delays have changed over time and reasons for delays, thereby elucidating targets for developing effective interventions and policies to decrease delays among Hispanic adults. The third research objective will be funded through a Postdoctoral Research Development Grant, which will provide funds for participant compensation and a wonderful undergraduate research assistant.

As I mentioned earlier, the path to being a health services researcher was not linear. In 2016, I began my PhD journey in the University of Arizona’s Department of Nutritional Sciences as a USDA National Needs Fellow. As a graduate research associate, my research focused on reducing health disparities faced by Mexican-origin communities and Hispanic communities in Southern Arizona. For 4.5 years, I conducted research to inform the development of a future culturally-tailored lifestyle intervention for Hispanic women with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, a risk factor for liver cancer. What I learned from my interactions with participants throughout this time resonated with memories of challenges my Spanish-speaking grandmother faced as an immigrant in this country.  Lack of access to care is a pivotal barrier to living healthful and vibrant lives. After I defended, I realized that what I was passionate about was researching ways to reduce barriers related to access and doing so in ways that would be sustainable and reach a greater number of individuals. This realization helped guide my next journey as an NCI T32 Cancer Prevention and Control Health Disparities Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona Cancer Center. Throughout this fellowship, my interests in addressing access to care barriers crystalized and I received focused training in cancer health disparities research, cancer epidemiology, and health services research. Additionally, I had the opportunity to greatly expand my research collaborations in the field of implementation science through actively participating in the Consortium for Cancer Implementation Science action group to develop a priority public good to improve operationalization of multi-level intervention core functions and forms and The Cancer Prevention and Control Research Network (CPCRN) as a CPCRN Scholar. As a Scholar, I am working with a team at the University of New Mexico to explore the implementation context in community oncology practices as it relates to implementing screening/assessment and referral processes to improve the uptake of physical activity interventions. I began my second postdoc position in May of this year and will continue expanding my training in oncology health services research.
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I would not be able to conduct the research I do without fully embracing a cross-disciplinary, team science approach. If you would be interested in collaborating, or maybe just grabbing a coffee, please do not hesitate to reach out to me via email – morrill1@arizona.edu. You can also link up with me on Twitter @KMorrill_PhD.    

Dr. Kristin Morrill was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Development Grant (PRDG) from the University of Arizona for a project titled “Factors Influencing the Decisions of When and Where to be treated in Hispanic Cancer Survivors”​​.

I have been a lifelong admirer of nature; as a child, hiking and camping were my favorite pastimes, but the great outdoors seemed, as Charles Darwin put it, an impenetrable “tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds…” I cared about conservation, but I struggled to turn my desire to preserve nature into action. As an undergraduate student at the University of Montevallo, my research experience on territorial behavior of a salamander species (the Peaks of Otter salamander, Plethodon hubrichti) opened my eyes to the vital role of science in conservation. Behavioral experiments, paired with knowledge of P. hubrichti’s environmental tolerance limits, could help us understand why the Peaks of Otter’s habitat was vulnerable to human activities, and how it persisted in the face of competition from a much more widespread salamander species (the red-backed salamander, Plethodon cinereus). Since then, I have pursued a career as a scientist with a focus on research that will inform conservation and restoration of natural ecosystems.
 
During my final undergraduate course, a field-based wetland ecology course, we visited pitcher plant bogs in a critically endangered ecosystem in the southeastern United States: longleaf pine savannas. I was captivated by the incredible plant diversity in the understory, and I had to know how so many kinds of plants could persist together. This led me to the lab of Dr. Kyle Harms at Louisiana State University. I joined his lab as a PhD student and dove headfirst into the “tangled bank” of plant communities. My graduate research focused on native perennial bunchgrasses, the dominant competitors in the longleaf pine savanna understory. Although these grasses use many limited resources, they also provide one of the main sources of fuel for the frequent fires that disturb the landscape, creating opportunities for more rare plants to colonize and grow. During my dissertation research, I discovered that dominant bunchgrasses are also spatially overdispersed, which means that there is abundant space between them where other plants can grow.
 
After 30 or so years of living in the southeastern United States, I decided I had had my fill of 90% humidity, so I searched for a job in a different climate. Luckily for me, Dr. Elise Gornish in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment, was searching for a Postdoctoral Researcher to lead a demographic study of the invasive perennial bunchgrass species, buffelgrass (Cenchrus ciliaris). Now I am at the University of Arizona examining the factors driving population growth of buffelgrass in the Sonoran Desert. Buffelgrass threatens the biodiversity and ecosystem function of Sonoran Desert plant communities both by competing with native species and by increasing wildfire risk. By studying its life cycle, growth, and reproduction in a variety of environmental contexts, we can determine which physical and biotic factors are ideal for the growth and spread of buffelgrass. Furthermore, with population modeling, we can determine which life stages of buffelgrass contribute the most to its population growth rates and which life stages are most vulnerable to treatment. We hope to use this study to understand what makes buffelgrass such a successful invader and to optimize treatment strategies to reduce the spread of buffelgrass in the Sonoran Desert.
 
As a member of the Gornish Lab, I can’t help but be excited about ecological restoration. In addition to my research on buffelgrass, I am collaborating with several other Postdoctoral Researchers (Drs. Trace Martyn, Lauren Svejcar, and Julia Cacon Labella) to determine how density, species diversity, and neighbor distance affect interactions between and among plant species commonly used in restoration in Sonoran Desert rangelands. With my own funding from the Postdoctoral Research Development Grant from the University of Arizona, I am continuing this collaboration to examine how priority effects influence interactions between buffelgrass and native grasses commonly used in restoration.
 
Although, I love research, I also find teaching and outreach very rewarding. This fall I am working with SARSEF: Southern Arizona Research, Science and Engineering Foundation to bring an authentic research experience to a rural high school biology class. I am partnering with Gavin Lehr, a science teacher at Sahuarita High School, to create an opportunity for his freshman biology students to conduct research on native pollinator-plant interactions. We have already planted a native pollinator habitat garden on the Sahuarita High School campus, and soon Mr. Lehr’s students will be observing nature and forming scientific questions and hypotheses right outside their classroom.
  
You can see more about my research on my website: https://katherinehovanes.wixsite.com/katherinehovanes. To learn more about ecological restoration research in the Gornish Lab, check out our lab website (https://www.gornishlab.com/) Instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/restorecal/?hl=en) and twitter (@RestoreCal).

Dr. Katherine Hovanes was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Development Grant (PRDG) from the University of Arizona for a project titled “Combined strategies for control of invasive grasses and native plant restoration​”​.

During my second year of college at East Carolina University, after un-deciding to be a physician and feeling lost in my career choice, I fell deeply in love.  His name was Brain (not Brian). Brain was intellectually seductive, mysterious, and best of all, single. I was swept off my feet and instantly knew that I would spend the rest of my life in his curious orbit.
 
After finishing a double major in Brain and his softer sister, Psychology, I embarked on a journey towards a master’s degree at University of Hartford. There, I learned Brain’s birth story, marveled at its development, and conducted enough experiments to understand I actually don’t know Brain at all. Sure, animal Brain can explain basic physiological and psychological functions, but unfortunately animal Brain can’t answer my most burning questions: How does Brain create language, what is a memory, why do we fall in love? For that, I needed human Brain. I spent several years learning about human Brain at Yale University and University of Maryland Baltimore, captivated by the different methodological techniques available to unravel his secrets. I fell even deeper in love and made it official in 2015, when I entered a PhD program at University of Louisville and gave human Brain my full commitment.
 
During my graduate sojourn, I bravely asked human Brain to expose one of his deepest secrets, emotional intelligence - an oft-nebulous concept he and his sister Psychology ceaselessly argue about. Using fMRI, human Brain carefully showed me how he creates emotional intelligence by elegantly combining emotional regulation and empathy, processes that occupy overlapping spaces in his territory. By the end of my PhD, human Brain had explained his birth, development, and various networks that dynamically couple and uncouple to create his myriad cognitive and emotional functions. Yet I wondered, how will Brain change as he gets older?
 
As an Arizona Sursum Fellow in the Department of Psychology, my postdoctoral work is focused on Brain’s aging processes. For example, Brain’s memory and attention aren’t what they used to be, but he is more optimistic than his younger self and as loquacious as ever. In fact, Brain’s language and emotional abilities have improved greatly as he’s aged. So, I asked Brain why. Using emotional precision of word use as a marker, I am exploring how Brain’s ability to express himself compares to both younger Brains and Brains that are at risk for Alzheimer’s disease.
 
Brain has been my constant inspiration for over a decade. I have publicly written about him in Scientific American, HuffPost Science, Aeon/Psyche and Medium, and to encourage others to find their own love story, established a highly successful science internship program for high-school students: Louisville Science Pathways. As a postdoc, I co-founded Mentally Minded, an evidence-based Q&A website that serves as an empowering knowledge base for mental health information. Even after all these years, I am still in awe that I get to study Brain, or as Anthony Doerr poetically describes him, “one wet kilogram within which spin universes.”
 
If you would like to chat about Brain with me, please visit my website www.curiouscortex.com, or come join me for our monthly informal gathering, MetaMind.

Dr. Teodora Stoica was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Development Grant (PRDG) from the University of Arizona for a project titled “Neuroimaging Skills Training during the Organization for Human Brain Mapping Meeting in Scotland, UK”​.

For me, it started with sunsets. What is responsible for that burning splash of color across the horizon? When I learned in high school chemistry that it was due to the particular composition and particles in the atmosphere, I was transfixed.
 
Today, I’m broadly interested in the study of planets in the Solar System and planets around other stars, which are called exoplanets. I specifically investigate their atmospheres, and in particular, the potential clouds and smog found on other planets. I want to figure out how these aerosols form and evolve, how they affect the overall atmosphere chemically and physically, how they change our observations of distant worlds, and how they impact habitability. In short, I try to figure out how clouds and hazes work — in everything from brown dwarfs to gas giants to ice giants to terrestrial worlds. I do so by combining my past and ongoing laboratory work and atmospheric computer models.
 
During my PhD work at Johns Hopkins University under the advisorship of Prof. Sarah Hörst, I experimentally explored how smog compositions change with different atmospheric  properties, from composition to temperature. I found that oxidized species, for exoplanets and for Neptune’s moon Triton, can be really important to smog formation and solid composition, in contrast to previous work from the Solar System that suggested only highly reducing atmospheres favor primarily hydrocarbon haze formation. I’m hard at work to implement these results into atmospheric models to compare with telescope observations both current and upcoming.
 
In addition, I run suites of atmospheric models to simulate how radiative transfer depends on various cloud and haze scenarios. For my postdoctoral work here at Arizona, I’m working closely with Professor Mark Marley to predict and interpret observations of all kinds of sub-stellar and planetary atmospheres from the Hubble Space Telescope and the newly operational JWST. I’m really excited to start seeing gaseous signatures of disequilibrium chemistry in these faraway worlds, and to try to connect these results to laboratory experiments on hazes.
 
Next up in the lab this fall, as an Arizona Sursum Fellow, I’m due to start a series of experiments exploring the role of the host star on the evolution of atmospheric haze. Haze primarily forms photochemically through dissociation and ionization of the gasses of the upper atmosphere. I hypothesize therefore that different stellar types with different ultraviolet fluxes should impact haze properties. We’ll be taking exoplanet-like hazes from my PhD lab and bombarding them with photons from UV lamps to measure the haze’s spectroscopic signatures before and after UV exposure.
 
Before grad school, I was at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York, where I majored in Astrophysics and spent a lot of time in various theatres (acting, dancing, set-building, stage managing, sight-seeing). I also ended up minoring in Science & Public Policy because I am passionate about improving the way we do science and who gets to participate in the scientific field. As part of that endeavor, I spent Fall 2019 in Washington, D.C. at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine with the Space Studies Board. There I helped with the Astro2020 Decadal Survey, the Solar and Space Physics Midterm Report, and planning for the next Planetary Science Decadal Survey. I’m still always interested in policy, both as Science for Policy and Policy for Science. One day in the (perhaps distant) future, I anticipate making the jump to spending most of my time in that realm rather than a lab.
 
Finally, there is always a niggling question on my mind: why study distant planets when the climate here on Earth is in a state of emergency? This is something I think about often as an extrasolar planetary scientist. But, to me, this pursuit of knowledge is one of the things that makes us very human. I could give you the clichés about how learning about other climates teaches us ultimately about our own, or a screed about the importance of fundamental research. Honestly, though, that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because of that moment in high school chemistry — what makes the sunset so beautiful? We’re all here looking for meaning beyond ourselves. We are bits of discarded stardust yearning to understand its own atoms rearranged in countless ways – the universe working to know itself. It’s a privilege beyond measure that I can ask these questions and work toward making something like an answer to a small few of them. And I also want to know: Is someone else staring up at a distant sky wondering the same?
 
If you’d like to chat science (or apparently, philosophy of science), you can contact me on Twitter (@OF_FallingStars) or just follow along as I tweet about science, my running goals, and my hot takes on the nature of other planets.

Dr. Sarah Moran was awarded a Postdoctoral Research Development Grant (PRDG) from the University of Arizona for a project titled “Alteration of Planetary Hazes Related to Composition of Host Star”.

​What makes one cancer more aggressive than another? What makes a tumor metastatic? These are the questions that I strive to answer through science. My field of research is translational cancer biology. Like many researchers that aim to contribute to the collection of knowledge about cancers and how to treat it, I hope to positively impact those who have been and will be affected by cancer.
 
My name is Martha B. Dua-Awereh and I am a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Tucson in the department of Immunobiology. My laboratory is in the University of Arizona Cancer Center. My mentor, Dr. Alfred Bothwell, relocated to the University of Arizona from Yale University in June 2021. I joined the lab as his first University of Arizona postdoc in December 2021. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, I originally moved to Tucson in August 2019. During my graduate studies at the University of Cincinnati, where I obtained a Doctor of Philosophy in Systems Biology and Physiology, I studied metaplasia and regeneration in gastric tissue under the mentorship of Dr. Yana Zavros. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to relocate with Dr. Zavros when she moved to the University of Arizona and was granted permission by my graduate program to complete my dissertation research remotely, in Tucson. I graduated in December 2021. Although studying biological factors that drive metaplastic changes initially sparked my interest in cancer, it was the death of a loved one from metastatic lung cancer that ultimately solidified my determination to pursue cancer research.
 
The immunosuppressive environment of aggressive cancers is a significant barrier to effective and comprehensive treatment. Furthermore, there is no clear diagnostic evaluation to determine if a primary tumor will become metastatic. Elevated expression of the Wnt antagonist Dkk-1 (Dickkopf WNT signaling pathway inhibitor 1) transmembrane protein has been detected in the sera and tumor tissues of patients, in various cancer types, including those resistant to immunotherapy. Presence of Dkk-1 in tumor tissue is also associated with poor prognosis. Dkk-1 inhibits beta-catenin-dependent Wnt signaling and is involved in embryogenesis and development. Although previous research from our laboratory suggests that Dkk-1 may also have a role in tumor cell proliferation and regulates immune cell activity by inducing inflammation, the mechanism by which it does so is unclear. One research focus of our laboratory is trogocytosis. In trogocytosis (in Greek, “trogo” means gnawing or nibbling), one cell “gnaws off” part of the plasma membrane of another cell. This transfer allows a cell to acquire non-native surface proteins from other cells. My current hypothesis is that overexpression of Dkk-1 in tumors creates an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment by facilitating the transfer of immune cell markers to tumor cells by trogocytosis and contributes to cancer metastasis. By elucidating the mechanism by which Dkk-1 promotes immunotherapy resistance and metastasis, I hope to gain a better understanding of how the tumor microenvironment impacts patient prognosis.
 
One of the models I used to study metaplasia, and now use to study metastasis, is the organoid model. Unlike cell lines, organoids are three-dimensional cellular structures that are formed from the stem cells of a particular organ. The stem cells recapitulate the differentiated cells and basic functional units of the organ or tissue they are isolated from. I culture organoids generated from human and mouse tumor tissues. From a tissue resection or a biopsy of a patient, we can generate organoids and perform in vitro experiments. For example, organoids can be co-cultured with different immune cells to determine which immune cells have the greatest impact on tumor proliferation and persistence. The strength of the organoid model is its physiological significance. We can observe in real-time how the cells and by extension, the organ will be affected. Organoids allow us to study how a tumor will respond to a drug or stressor. This gives researchers and clinicians a better prediction of how a patient will respond to different treatments and how additional factors such as immune cells or acquired proteins can affect the cancer cells. Cancers that I am currently researching are pancreatic, lung, and colorectal cancer. I hope to extend my research to breast and ovarian cancer, with a focus on health disparities in cancer treatment.
 
I am not only passionate about exploring the intricacies of cancer metastasis but also driven to help increase the number of underrepresented groups in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine). We need more diverse representation within the patient populations we work with in research and more diversity among the scientists and clinicians that study cancer. As the first in my family to graduate from college and become a doctor, first in my family to be born in the United States (my family is from Ghana), being an African American woman, having a disability that is not visible and growing up with a socio-economically disadvantaged background, I have encountered several hurdles along my path to becoming a scientist. I understand why others who have had similar experiences can be deterred from pursuing STEMM fields. I use the knowledge I’ve gained from my experiences to help others to succeed and thrive in their own pursuits. In the past, I’ve encouraged my fellow students to major in mathematics, physics, and other STEMM fields of study. In graduate school as president of the SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science) Cincinnati chapter and regional director for Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio of the Student National Medical Association, I participated in several community outreach projects focused on science and health education.  As a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., I continue to raise awareness about health disparities in our local communities and encourage participation of underrepresented groups in the All of Us Research Program. Currently, I am a member of the Women in Physiology Committee of the American Physiological Society, continue to mentor students in my lab here at the University of Arizona and students at the University of Cincinnati, speak on panels about diversity in science, raise awareness about science and medicine through social media, and serve as a poster judge at conferences such as SACNAS and ABRCMS (Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists). My long-term career goals are to continue my development as a translational scientist, address health disparities through my research, and serve as an ambassador for diversity, equity, and inclusion in science and medicine.
 
You can connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter (@MarthaDu).  To learn more about our lab and our past and current research projects, visit our lab website at https://immunobiology.arizona.edu/research/bothwell-lab and our lab Twitter (@Bothwell_Lab). 

Many of us have noticed lately that prices of many products have skyrocketed. The world is facing an unprecedented energy crisis because it heavily depends on fossil fuels that have become scarce due to the COVID-19 struggles and geopolitical tensions. At the heart of this problem lies the slow energy transition that needs to transform the global energy sector from fossil-based to zero-carbon. Decarbonization will be critical not only to supply the continuously increasing energy demand, but more importantly to reduce energy-related CO2 emissions to limit climate change. The only solution will be a combination of various renewable energy technologies going from photovoltaic cells to batteries and solar fuels. Fundamentally, most of these technologies are based on (photo)electrochemical processes, which is my main scientific background.

My passion for science, and chemistry more specifically, and curiosity for the unknown started right after high school and it has been a constant motivation throughput my career since then. As a result, I received my PhD in 2015 at Ghent University in Belgium by developing new corrosion protection treatments for metallic objects, gaining expertise in different fields going from electrochemistry and surface analysis to materials science. After my PhD, I had to make one of the hardest decisions in my life when I left my family to accept an offer for a postdoctoral position sponsored by the Office of Naval Research at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the Reynolds Research Group. Next to adapting a completely new lifestyle, I also switched from working with metals to semiconductors, which geared my research to the world of semiconductor electrochemistry. I quickly realized that the fundamentals for many renewable technologies required an often ignored and/or incorrectly used deep electrochemical background, which started my crusade for teaching the correct science to students. Thrown in the world of conjugated polymers, I engineered novel transparent electrodes and device structures for electrochromic devices but was also involved in understanding ion-electron conducting mechanisms, internal resistances and charging effects within redox-active devices for applications such as supercapacitors and switchable elements for frequency-agile antennas. I am convinced that this work in combination with absorbing much of the knowledge from other group members on organic photovoltaics, conjugated polymer synthesis and device manufacturing makes me to the mature scientist I am today.

​In 2020, I decided to move even further west to the University of Arizona to work under the supervision of Dr. Erin Ratcliff and Dr. Neal Armstrong on the electrochemical processes within optoelectronic devices to solve stability, manufacturing, and characterization problems, which remain the main issue for their further commercialization. Critical to understand degradation processes, I have been developing electrochemical approaches to study the defect (electro)chemistry in material and device stacks with unprecedented detection limits under operating conditions. Overall, the advanced electrochemical characterization platform we created is crucial towards the search for low cost, improved and stable (opto)electronic materials to realize industry-scalable technologies in the field of photovoltaics, charge storage systems, photoelectrochemical cells, etc. This platform I developed has led me to improve my experiences as an inventor and to start competing for research funding. My goal is to pursue highly impactful studies that will help and accelerate the development of renewable technologies to reach our 100% clean energy future.

Dr. Jules Moutet received the Honorable Mention for the 2022 Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholar Award.

Dr. Lila Wollman received the Honorable Mention for the 2022 Outstanding Postdoctoral Scholar Award.