"Once in awhile you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right" ~Jerry Garcia
I first began laboratory research when I worked as a research intern at The Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine during the summers of 1999 and 2000 under the supervision of Dr. Jill P. Smith. At Penn State, I studied the efficacy of novel chemotherapeutic agents for treatment of human pancreatic cancer. Following graduation from Virginia Tech with a B.S. in Biology and a minor in Chemistry in May of 2001, I began graduate studies in the Sible Lab in the fall. I began my research in the Sible Lab studying the effect of ionizing radiation (IR) on the activation of XChk1 and XChk2 protein kinases in the developing Xenopus laevis embryo. Currently, I am trying to determine the role XChk2 has in the cell cycle remodeling which occurs at the midblastula transition (MBT). Ultimately, I would like to not only characterize the XChk2 signaling pathway, but also determine its relationship to XChk1 protein kinase.