Congratulations to Our 2025 GMS Educator and Mentor Awardees!

I was first hired by [Daniel Remick, MD] as his lab manager back in October 2006. I worked as that until 2015, spent a year at Boston Children’s Hospital, and then was recruited back to be faculty in November 2016.  So, I think of it as almost 19 years, but there was a little break there.

I started in inflammation but transitioned in 2010 to Biospecimen Science with [Christopher Andry, MPhil, PhD]. We had a focus on cancer, particularly prostate cancer, procuring specimens and controlling for pre-analytical variables to enhance downstream applications.  Since the pandemic, my lab has focused on COVID vaccination and infection work and has also just recently partnered with the new Clinical Research Unit at BMC, helping to manage lab samples for clinical trials.

Surprise for sure. We have so many great educators on this campus, and I look to so many as mentors. I was truly honored.

I love sharing my passion for science. The students we have here keep me from getting jaded. They have such bright hope for the future, and I love to be a part of that.

I believe strongly in a having a healthy amount of discussion. I also pepper all of my lectures with anecdotes to try to make some of the material hold more value for the students. Not all classes lend themselves to discussion, but I do try to make it slightly more interesting. I’m lucky that at this stage in their careers that for the most part, the students are in the class because they want to be. It allows for a more engaging experience.

I love to hear about what brings them to BU.  We have such a wide variety of students from all backgrounds. I think it is a huge strength to have such varied backgrounds. I get to learn just as much from them as they do me when they share their culture and how a topic I’m teaching about may intersect with them.

GMS has created such a welcoming community for students and faculty, and I consider myself extremely lucky to be among its ranks.

BU and I go back a long way. I earned my PhD in the Department of Microbiology at a time when GMS didn’t exist! I then left BU for my first post-doc at University Hospital, which had a door connecting it to BU; i.e., I didn’t stray very far. I then came back to the medical school for a post-doc in the Department of Biochemistry. I’ve never left!

The work I do includes “teaching” in a very broad sense. I teach students basic science (biochemistry) as well as so-called “professional development” that includes imparting some of the skills required of a PhD-trained scientist outside of the traditional science coursework. In addition, I’m involved with keeping track of our incredible alumni and drawing on their expertise to help us enable our graduates to secure meaningful employment.

I no longer run a research lab, but my work was seeking to understand inflammatory processes that lead to the vascular disease, atherosclerosis.  I have also been involved with researching best practices related to professional development for our doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers. Starting with an NIH-funded grant entitled “BU’s BEST [Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training],” we developed programming to enable our trainees to build the skills required of the biomedical workforce. We use workforce data to inform our curriculum and the trainees’ career exploration and skill building. We also launched the TOTAL (Training Opportunities to Augment Learning), a digital app to connect our biomedical trainees to career and professional development events happening at BU and across multiple Boston-based partner institutions.

Shock!

As I said when I accepted this honor, I really shouldn’t get paid to do this as it isn’t work, it’s my passion! Seeing students learn and progress through their programs, earn their degrees and then turn that learning into meaningful careers is what I love!

That’s a tough question, as it really depends upon the class; some are conducive to discussion-based learning while others are lecture-based classes. In all cases, we try to gear the learning to the students’ interests, such as biomedical research vs. dentistry.

As stated above, seeing our students go out into the world, applying what they’ve learned to better our world brings me joy. As assistant dean of alumni for GMS, I have the pleasure of tracking our PhD alumni and calling upon them to “give back,” such as by serving on panel discussions for our trainees to learn about the variety of career options open to them with a PhD in the biomedical sciences. It’s so gratifying to hear how our students are changing the world when they go out into the workforce in a host of capacities, including some jobs I never heard of when I was studying!

My lab has been studying how normal cells acquire the genetic changes that turn them into cancer cells since 2013.

One major difference between normal cells and cancer cells is that cancer cells tend to be aneuploid, which means they possess an abnormal number of chromosomes (not the exact 23 pairs that exist in normal cells). One major focus of my lab is to develop strategies/drugs that selectively kill cells with abnormal numbers of chromosomes (i.e. cancer cells) while sparing cells with normal numbers of chromosomes (i.e. healthy cells).

Of course I was honored, but I also felt some guilt because mentoring for me has been very easy due to the exceptional students I have had over the years. I was also very appreciative that several of my students took the time and effort to write nomination letters on my behalf.

It’s the most important part of my job, and I treat it that way.

I have a hands-off philosophy and encourage students to think independently and drive their own projects. The best experiments are the ones that students conceive and perform all on their own.

While I get older and older, the students who join my lab stay the same age. They are always full of energy and ideas. I feel like their youth keep me energized and motivated!