Katie is a doctoral candidate in the Clinical Translational Sciences Ph.D. program specializing in neurotrauma. Her dissertation seeks to develop molecular tools specific to the rod microglia variant reported as a pathological hallmark of multiple neurological diseases, including traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s disease, and ALS. Molecular tools encompass cell surface markers, gene expression patterns, and proteomic signatures and will each be validated across neurological injury models and piloted as biomarkers of injury and disease.
Katie holds a National Research Service Award F31 Pre-Doctoral fellowship awarded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the NIH. She is a previous recipient of the Brain Injury Association of America Dissertation Award and the Valley Research Partnership P1 Award. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences with a concentration in Neuroscience from DePaul University.
Her mentor is Dr. Jonathan Lifshitz, who directs the Translational Neurotrauma Research Program, a joint venture of the UA College of Medicine-Phoenix, BARROW Neurological Institute of Phoenix Children’s Hospital, and the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care System.
A list of her publications can be found here.
Faculty mentor: Dr. Jonathan Lifshitz