I took a circuitous path into science. After an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, I went to medical school where I was first exposed to both in depth basic research in fertilization and the joys and challenges of women's health care. I did a clinical residency in obstetrics & gynecology and then a fellowship in reproductive endocrinology & infertility. During my fellowship, I returned to the lab where I once again studied fertilization and figured out that my passion for scientific research was greater than my passion for clinical medicine. I went on to do a PhD and postdoctoral research that aimed to understand how the fertilizing sperm changes the egg into a one-cell embryo capable of becoming a new individual.
My current research group carries out basic research to promote our understanding of the effects of the environment on human reproductive health, particularly during sensitive developmental windows. We seek to understand the basic reproductive biology of early mammalian embryogenesis with a particular focus on fertilization and preimplantation embryo development. We also study how exposure to estrogenic endocrine disrupting chemicals impacts female reproductive tract development to cause infertility and uterine cancer later in life. This basic bench science addresses problems that have direct relevance to human reproduction, including optimizing assisted reproduction technologies and how the environment influences reproductive success.
