Biography

When a close family member of mine was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was consumed with fear and concern. As I went through my undergraduate years at Johns Hopkins University (JHU), I started to channel those feelings into the chemistry, biology, and mathematics I had become so familiar with. Through my Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChemBE) degree, I realized I could use the skills I learned to combine my passions in research, engineering, and medicine to design effective chemotherapy delivery methods that can help alleviate cancer patients’ pain. After receiving a master’s degree in ChemBE at JHU, I started medical school at the University of Maryland Medical Scientist Training Program where I continued to expand my interests in not only patient care, but in teaching, mentoring, and medical education as well. For my PhD, I will be working to create novel nanobody-drug conjugates to treat pancreatic cancer in an international collaboration between the Cambridge Department of Chemistry and the National Institutes of Health. I am honored to have been selected as a Gates-Cambridge Scholar and look forward to the support from this multidisciplinary network to help accomplish my goals.